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SERMONS TO STUDENTS 



Sermons to Students 



THOUGHTFUL PERSONS 



LLEWELYN D. BEVAN, LL.B., D.D. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

743 and 745 Broadway 

1881 



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CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1881 



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TWO CONGREGATIONS 

SEPARATED BY LONG LEAGUES OF STORMY OCEAN 

BUT 

UNITED IN THE AFFECTION OF THE PREACHER 



CONTENTS. 



I. Religion and the Cultivation of the Intellect. 

«' For the Lord giveth wisdom : out of His mouth cometh 
knowledge and understanding." (Proverbs ii., 6.). 



II. The Study of Science. 

*' Skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and un- 
derstanding science. (Daniel i., 4.). . . . .29 

III. Religion and Law. 

" The law is good if a man use it lawfully." (I. Timothy, 
i.,8.) 59 

IV. The Art of Healing. 

" Physician, heal thyself." (Luke iv., 23.) . 87 

V. Religion and Art. 

" And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord 
. hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of 
Hur, of the tribe of Judah : and he hath filled him with 
the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in 
knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship ; and to 
devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in 
brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carv- 
ing of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And 



CONTENTS. 



he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he and 
Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Them 
hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner 
of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, 
and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, 
and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that 
do any work, and of those that devise cunning work. 
(Exodus xxxv., 30-35.) US 

VI. Religious and Irreligious Theology. 

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only 
wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen." 
(I. Timothy, i., 17.) 151 

VII. Religion and Life — The Supreme Study. 

" For what is your life ? " (James iv., 14.) . . .181 



RELIGION 

AND THE CULTIVATION 

OF THE INTELLECT. 



Proverbs II., 6.— " For the Lord giveth wisdom : out 
of His mouth cometh knowledge and under- 
standing." 



I. 

RELIGION AND THE CULTIVATION OF 
THE INTELLECT. 

It fell to the lot of the congregation, to 
which I ministered in London, to include with- 
in it a large number of students, whose pecu- 
liar position naturally demanded from the 
preacher a special regard. Related to some 
of them by intimate ties, and feeling a deep 
and sympathetic interest in all students, it be- 
came almost a paramount duty to address 
them in some mode more direct and immedi- 
ate than that presented by the usual service. 
And now the time seems to have come when 
the delivery of these discourses may not be 
inappropriate in this pulpit This might 
have been done by lectures to students 
pure and simple, to which students alone 
were invited. But one of the dangers of the 
present day, which consists in too sharply 



4 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

separating men in classes, and thinking of 
them only in some professional form, would 
have been thus incurred. The subdivision 
of labor, and the vast increase of possible 
activities, which so mark our time, and com- 
pel men to become specialists, tend to ren- 
der even the intellect narrow although in- 
tense, and to destroy the wider culture which 
makes us truly human. I have no sympathy 
with class gatherings of any kind, and least of 
all in relation to worship and religious thought. 
Whilst, therefore, addressing students, I have 
rather invited them to join in the common 
congregation, so that on the one hand the 
student may not forget his relation to all so- 
ciety, and that, on the other hand the more 
promiscuous crowd may come into sympathy 
with the special learner, and by God's bless- 
ing, all may find advantage in the development 
of a reverent spirit, a pure heart, and a truly 
Divine life. 

I propose to address various classes of 
students, but before doing this severally, it 
will be well to consider the general bearings 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 5 

of religion upon any and all forms of mental 
discipline. The subject of the first address is, 
therefore, Religion in its relation to the cul- 
tivation of the mind. 

That those, whose sphere in life requires a 
more exact and extensive mental training than 
the majority of people, should entertain right 
views upon religion, and should, perhaps more 
than any, possess the religious spirit, needs 
only to be stated. For their own sakes, reli- 
gion is the chief concern, and in respect to 
others, over whom they will some day exer- 
cise a very deep and lasting influence, it is a 
serious evil if the best trained minds of the 
community are either hostile or indifferent to 
the claims of God. 

Then again, students are placed in peculiar 
peril in regard to religion. There is a prev- 
alent notion amongst half-educated people 
that the highest culture of the mind tends to 
the destruction of the religious spirit. Reli- 
gion having to do with things that are above 
reason, is supposed by some to be unreason- 
able, and when a youth commences to use his 



6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

reasoning faculties with much freedom and 
enjoyment he sometimes supposes that reli- 
gion is to be suddenly and rashly condemned 
because it is irrational, and not unfrequently 
shipwreck is made of reason and faith at once. 
There is, moreover, at the present day a spe- 
cial antagonism between the school which 
prides itself upon its rationalism and the school 
which is equally intrenched in its strong faith. 
Bigots on both sides hurl scorn and anathema, 
and rush into dusty war. Ignorance of each 
others real character and aims combines with 
intense self-confidence and assurance, and 
when all this takes place in the hurry and 
thoroughlessness of our times it is not a strange 
thing if the faith of many waxes feeble, and 
the best interests, especially of the young, are 
lost altogether in the general hubbub. 

The habits of student life moreover, are 
not always helpful to the preservation of a re- 
ligious character. The studies, the compani- 
ons, the work on the one side and the recrea- 
tion on the other, often operate injuriously 
upon the spiritual tone. There is nothing to 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 7 

give a start to religion ; there is little to sus- 
tain it. Many are they who, in the course of 
study, have wholly lost their faith. 

Religion may be properly considered in re- 
lation to the ends of study, and to the spirit 
in which these ends are to be pursued. 

What, in the first place, are the proper ob- 
jects of a man's study ? There are, of course, 
specific subjects with which the student must 
make himself familiar. The lawyer must 
know the principles and be familiar with the 
practice of law. The physician must under- 
stand the constitution of the human frame, 
and the various marks and signs of disease. 
The man of science must unlock the secrets 
of nature, explore her facts, and educe her 
laws ; and all these attainments must be 
sought by special attention to that line of 
knowledge along which each has to journey. 
A student must, for the most part, master his 
profession, unless he is to be distanced in the 
race — a sorry failure in the world. But, 
things to be known, do not by any means 
embrace all with which the student must in- 



8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

termeddle. To make the brain a mere store- 
house of facts and laws, however beautiful, 
recondite, and vital they may be, is not 
enough ; and although too often, students re- 
gard the acquisition of knowledge in their 
special branch as the sole matter of impor- 
tance to them, it is quite certain that he who 
has only acquired even a very extensive 
array of facts, has not profited in the highest 
degree by his studies. This is rendered all 
the more evil by the fashion of examination 
which now so largely prevails. Everybody 
must undergo an examination, generally com- 
petitive, before he can enter into his place in 
life, and do the duty of a man. If you would 
become an adviser of men in perplexity, you 
must be examined. If you would seek to 
lessen disease and to minister to the unfor- 
tunate, you must be examined. Public offices 
have examinations at their portal ; and I 
sometimes think that men will some day have 
to undergo a competitive examination be-- 
fore they enter into life itself. The result of 
all this is the temptation to pursue only such 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. Q 

study as will enable a man to pass the exami- 
nation. It needs much ability in the exami- 
ner, and more variety of dealing with cases 
than can be generally secured by colleges, 
institutions, and the like, to discover what a 
man really is, rather than what he knows ; 
and hence study becomes the mere exercise 
of the memory, with all the attendant temp- 
tations and perils of what is known in student 
parlance as " cram." 

But education ought to discipline and to 
strengthen the powers of the mind. This is 
the real object of all study. Men are to be 
prepared for their work. Indeed, the study 
which is intended to increase knowledge and 
to gather facts, often begins only when stu- 
dent life ceases. In our earlier years we have 
to learn how to learn, to be taught and prac- 
tised in the best way of observing, thinking, 
comparing, judging. The best student is the 
man who is most, not the man who has 
learned most. The mere bookworm, however 
learned, is of little use in life. That alone is 
worthy of the name of preparation for pro- 



10 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

fessional or any other form of life which tends 
to bring out and perfect the mental faculties. 
Such education makes ready, capable, trust- 
worthy men. Such education alone fits us 
for citizenship, for highest service to our fel- 
lows, for the discharge of our duty in that 
place and that office to which it has pleased 
God to call us. 

The highest ideal of study, therefore, must 
be that which secures, or at least aims at 
securing, thoroughness of discipline and 
wholeness of view. Ignorance consists in the 
inability to see the many aspects which be- 
long to all. objects of man's attention. The 
difference between the man of culture and the 
boor is, that the latter has only a few ways in 
which he can regard things. It is the asso- 
ciations which gather round every object, the 
many relations which all things bear to each 
other — these make, up the fulness of life. In 
proportion as a man merely sees things in 
themselves, and is only sensible of the sensa- 
tions which they produce upon him, in that 
proportion he is only an animal, without the 



RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. II 

exercise of that Divine reason which makes 
him different from the brute, and raises him 
to the kinship of the immortals. It is the 
glory of man that to him the "primrose on 
the river's brim" is something else than a 
primrose. Man can " look before and after," 
and it is in order to cultivate this ability, that 
men are called to study and to learn. The 
well-educated mind is able to see all these 
sides of life and things, to perceive the har- 
monious blending of the diverse, and to mark 
how all the universe is bound up within itself 
into one grand and perfect whole. 

Hence the good student will leave no side 
of his mind undisciplined and untaught. Per- 
fection must be the goal to which he tends, 
completeness the final end of all his endeav- 
ors. Perfection is nothing but the harmoni- 
ous and free working of all parts, nothing 
disproportionate, nothing uncared for, noth- 
ing monstrous or neglected. In one word, 
the perfect student should be the perfect 
man. 

But I shall be at once told that such an 



12 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

ideal of " student" life is impossible. At one 
time, perhaps, it might have been competent 
for a single mind in the space generally allot- 
ted to, life, to have gained an almost ade- 
quate acquaintance with everything that 
could then be known ; but now such univer- 
sality of acquirement is quite unattainable. 
So numerous are the . lines of investigation, 
and so extensive the field, even in single 
divisions of single sciences, that, were a man 
to be as capable as Solomon and as long- 
lived as Methuselah, it would be impossible 
for him to hope to compass even one of these 
divisions. This is true, but it must be re- 
membered that I am speaking not of acquire- 
ments, but powers. To learn everything is 
not given to man, but to be his best self in 
everything which he can be — this is his privi- 
lege, this, indeed, his divine destiny. There 
is no power of the mind which may not be 
trained, and that for which I contend, is that 
all the powers and faculties should be dili- 
gently and proportionately exercised. No 
good student will neglect any side of his be- 



RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 3 

ing. He must have fulness of nature, wide- 
ness of capacity ; at least, all that God has 
given him, must receive its due regard. 

Now, it is properly here, that the subject of 
religion comes to be considered by the stu- 
dent. The nature which he possesses is 
distinctly religious — that is to say, he has 
capacities and powers which have relation to 
the Supreme Being, and which require train- 
ing and discipline equally with all the others. 
Man is naturally formed for God, and if a 
man does not attend to that faculty whereby 
he regards God and can apprehend llim, he 
neglects that part of himself which is most 
important and most influential. 

It is quite certain that no man of intelli- 
gence will ignore the part which religion has 
to take in our individual and social life ; no 
man can afford to pass lightly by the claims 
upon him which are put forth by religion. I 
know it is very easy to lay aside every idea 
of God, and to dismiss the subject of our duty 
to Him carelessly and without a thought. 
But this only evinces a shallow nature and a 



14 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

very unthinking mind. It is true that many 
men famous for their learning, and of vast 
intellectual influence, have not hesitated to 
avow themselves or to allow themselves to 
be considered as absolutely denying the be- 
ing of God, and, consequently, the foundation 
of all religion of any kind whatever ; but 
these have been exceptional, and by their 
action in this respect have placed themselves 
utterly outside of some of the most pressing 
questions of our life ; and, certainly, are con- 
fronted by a much greater number, and, I 
venture even to affirm, a number made up of 
men of vaster mental powers and more wide- 
ly spread influence than themselves, who 
strenuously, and without a moment's failing, 
have affirmed their belief in God, their recog- 
nition of the supreme relation which man 
bears to his Creator. 

Into the question of the existence of this 
religious side of our nature, however, I am 
not going to enter. I presume it will be 
acknowledged by the majority of those who 
hear me to-day. My point is, that accepting 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. I 5 

the religious nature as a fact, that nature must 
be trained and disciplined, and must become a 
subject of culture, if we are to lay any claim 
to the wholeness of being to which I have 
already referred. 

The importance of this may be further seen 
by considering the influence which religion 
has exerted upon all human life and history. 
Suppose it were possible to eliminate religion 
from the story of the world, what would you 
have left? No matter among what people you 
examine it, no matter at what epoch ; from 
the lowest savage to the highest sag-e, from 

o o o ' 

the darkest barbarism to the brightest civili- 
zation, everywhere and at all times, we find 
religion summoning men's deepest regard, 
and most profoundly influencing their doings. 
To-day, every profession is brought into con- 
tact with its practical working, and no man 
can rightly interpret the past, no man can 
rightly treat the present, unless he has a pro- 
found acquaintance with the force and opera- 
tion of this spiritual sphere. This, remember, 
is only fully attained by the study and culture 



1 6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

of religion in the retirement and experiences 
of our own souls. 

The part which religion has taken in the 
education of the race demands attention, as 
giving further illustration to my argument. 
Not infrequently in the judgment of the 
superficial critic, religion is charged with 
having been a hindrance to human progress, 
with having stifled the advance of the mind, 
and, oftentimes indeed, with having sought 
to destroy its liberty. This is the common 
logical fallacy of putting the universal in the 
place of the particular. Certain forms of 
religious polity have been chargeable with 
such conspiracy against human light and 
progress, but even these have not always 
hindered culture, and then, only, when they 
have ceased to be religious. I claim for reli- 
gion in all its forms, notwithstanding the su- 
perstitions by which it has been corrupted, the 
honor of having more than aught else aided 
man in his long and weary pilgrimage ; and 
for religion in her purer forms, the simple 
sense of a Divine presence, and the relation 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 7 

which man bears to his God — the absolutely 
sole honor of raising mankind, freeing the 
enslaved, and instructing the ignorant. What 
has been the force which stood between man 
and the basest and most destructive animal- 
isms of his nature, now centred in the tyran- 
nical conqueror, and now more terribly dis- 
seminated throughout a nation or a race ? 
What has been the prime mover of every war 
of liberty, of every philanthropic project which 
has tended to freedom, to knowledge, to hap- 
piness ? What has been at one time the sole 
custodian of knowledge, and the sole guar- 
dian of the wisdom of the ages ? There can 
be only one answer, and that is, Religion ; 
and it being so, no man dares call himself a 
student, a seeker for knowledge, a learner 
and a disciple, who neglects to study the 
religious instincts and sentiments of our na- 
ture, and again I affirm, these can only be 
properly studied in our own consciousness 
and experience. 

Before leaving this portion of my subject I 
should like to call your attention to another 



1 8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

point of consideration, which seems to pos- 
sess great force. Every study, in the present 
day, furnishes the proof that religion cannot 
be easily set aside by those who are engaged 
in the cultivation of the mind. 

Have you never observed how all men are 
dealing with religious topics ? The most 
striking instance is to be found in the modern 
teachers of science. One of the principles of 
the scientific investigator is to have nothing 
whatever to do with theological or religious 
subjects. He boldly declares that metaphysi- 
cal and ontological questions are not for him 
to discuss. He must observe, describe, clas- 
sify, educe laws, but all questions which 
deal with the origin of the universe, by the 
very principles of his science, are even not to 
be approached. Nay, psychical and mental 
speculations are almost tabooed. But what 
is the fact ? Scarcely a single man of science 
of any repute but deals with these all-absorb- 
ing points of human thought, and, indeed, 
cannot help himself. His very negations, his 
denials of the appositeness of such subjects 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 1 9 

are themselves the doors by which they 
enter. One of the late utterances of a well- 
known Society for the promotion of science, 
rings with an echo of religion which gave it 
its importance, and caused the world to stay 
its gross activities of business or pleasure 
to hear what the wise could tell. The last 
work of one of the most admired teachers of 
our agfe, notwithstanding that he had been 
brought up in an atmosphere of absolute in- 
difference to all and every religion, was his 
latest thoughts upon this all-absorbing topic 
of human regard. Believe me, fellow-stu- 
dents, man has a religious nature. It was the 
breath of God inbreathed into him on his 
natal morn, and forget it, despise it, cast it 
from him as he may, it will come up and as- 
sert itself — either as a gracious messenger of 
mercy, to comfort and console the poor heart, 
that lost its blessedness when it turned away 
from the true centre of its being, or as an 
avenging spirit to confound, to alarm, to 
overwhelm, in the disastrous and the dreary 
chaos, which the soul has created around it- 



20 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

self, when it refused to recognize Him who 
alone is order and light. 

I have somewhere read a German story of 
a man who sold his shadow to the devil, in re- 
turn for some special power with which the 
devil could endow him. It was a strange 
and eerie record of the wonderful adventures 
through which the man passed. But how ter- 
rible became the life which had ceased to bear 
with it the natural attendant of shade ! Ter- 
ror and loneliness, the flight of companions, 
and the outcasting by mankind — these were 
the horrible results of the shadowlessness of 
his life. This seems to me to be the fate of 
some who regard religion as a shadow, and 
sell it to the devil of self-trust, of arrogant, in- 
tellectual pride. They call religion a shadow, 
unsubstantial, and yet gloomy and dark. 
They forget that shadow is only the conse- 
quence of light, that there is shadow only 
when the sunlight shines upon the other 
side. So they, as the shadowless man in the 
fantastic story, become monsters, miserable 
and inhuman, who must leave the sunshine 



RELIGION— CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 21 

and find only in night their happiness and 
rest. 

Religion is human. It is that which differ- 
entiates us from the brute. You cannot, you 
dare not, neglect it, or you cease to be all 
your manhood or womanhood may be. Well 
has a recent sweet-voiced poet sung — 

" My soul is like some cage-born bird, that hath 
A restless prescience, howsoever won, 
Of a broad pathway leading to the sun, 
With promptings of an oft-reproved faith 

" In sunward yearnings. Stricken though her breast, 
And faint her wings with beating at the bars 
Of sense, she looks beyond outlying stars, 
And only in the infinite sees rest. 

" Sad soul, if ever thy desire be bent 

Or broken to thy doom, and made to share 
The ruminant's beatitude, content, 

Chewing the cud of knowledge with no care, 
In germs of life within ; then will I say 
Thou art not caged, but fitly stalled in clay." 

But religion is not only to be regarded as 
itself an object of study, never to be forgot- 
ten ; it is also an influence of deep and far- 
reaching power over the rest of the nature. 



22 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

This has been implied in what has been al- 
ready said. Let us now proceed to give this 
thought a more distinct and definite shape. 

The student cannot do his work as a com- 
mon man. It is not intended by this to decry 
the labor of the hand, for this must be done in 
a certain high spirit, if it is to be any other 
than the drudgery of the slave ; but there is 
special need, in the cultivation of the mind, for 
the man to set before himself noble models, 
and to pursue his work on no low level of 
selfishness, with base sensual ends. Intellec- 
tual cultivation is, as a rule, associated with 
moral, refinement. There is nothing so dis- 
gusting as the corruptions of a finely-trained 
mind. Indeed, if there be anything like a 
wide field of mental culture, united with moral 
degradation, the result is generally diabolic. 
Satan is only the concrete of abstract intellect 
divorced from conscience. When sensual cor- 
ruption is added, the result is not diabolic so 
much as brutal. The gross sensual nature 
overcomes the intellectual powers, and sinks 
them utterly in its own foul mire. For the sup- 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 23 

port of morality under the influence of great 
intellectual advance, the religious nature is 
needful. No more striking instance can be 
appealed to, than the decay of the French na- 
tion under the influence of the intellectual athe- 
ism taught by Voltaire. In every department 
of human life, other than the economic (and 
this has been conserved in those classes of 
French society least affected by atheistic 
thought), France has retrograded in relation 
to the other nations of the world, and she can 
never recover her proper prestige, her due in- 
fluence, until she has recovered a deep religi- 
ous spirit, wide-spread and prevalent through- 
out the whole nation. What is true of the 
nation is still more true of the individual. The 
destruction of the entire character may be 
seen, alas, often among students. This will 
be generally found to be preceded by neglect 
of the religious side of their nature — faith 
undermined either by the operations of intel- 
lectual doubt, or else still more seriously as- 
sailed by the numbing influences of sinful 
habits, but all proceeding in the first instance 



24 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

from the neglect of practical religion, the duties 
of prayer and communion with the Unseen. 

There are, however, still more specific in- 
fluences which religion exerts upon the stu- 
dent. 

In the first place, it renders him reverent. 
Nothing is so unsuitable to the man who de- 
sires a cultivated mind as arrogance and self- 
esteem. All wisdom is humble. Those, who 
have known most, have been most conscious 
of the vast stores of knowledge which lie un- 
touched, of the mighty spheres of being into 
which man may never enter. But it is note- 
worthy that the converse is also true, that 
those who are most diffident of themselves 
are those to whom the greatest revelations are 
made. Men have to become as little children 
if they would enter the kingdom of knowledge 
and wisdom, even as if they would enter the 
kingdom of Heaven. Simplicity of mind, 
humbleness, self-restraint, all the beautiful vir- 
tues of the soul that we gather up in the term 
reverent, which means so much on the nega- 
tive as well as on the positive side — these 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 2$ 

must belong to him who would be thoroughly 

furnished in mind for the great battles of life, 

and the outcomes into the universe. Rever- 
es o 

ence has been the mark of the profound and 
patient investigators of nature in all ages. 
Reverence is the glory of the philosopher ; it 
is the clear light of heaven which shines 
around the poet who " sits by the side of 
Jove." 

Now, religion and its duties produce rever- 
ence. The religious man recognizes the con- 
stant presence of God. The world to him 
becomes a temple, and every duty is a sacri- 
fice. He is a priest, and his priestly garments 
must not be defiled ; he is a prophet, and his 
utterances must be true. His soul must love 
truth, and know truth alone as its food and 
medicine. All objects of study with such a 
man, ascend towards God, and shine in the 
light of the Divine throne. His life is conse- 
cration, and for him all things are filled with 
the Divine. This reacts upon his intellectual 
nature, strengthening and disciplining it. The 
greatest painters of the world were accustomed 



26 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

to prepare for their labors by prayer and fast- 
ing. The annals of study bear upon their 
brightest pages the records of the most devout 
and reverent of earth's sons. 

Another element of the studious nature is the 
harmony which subsists between the different 
powers of the soul. Man cannot gain intel- 
lectual vigor when his whole being is torn 
asunder by conflicting forces. Outward phy- 
sical quietness is the usually necessary condi- 
tion of study. Inward spiritual peace is as 
needful. Religion will give this. Nothing in 
our nature so tends to preserve the balance 
and equipoise of the whole. Right views and 
right practice here, will tone down all that is 
excessive, stimulate all that is weak. Coming 
into proper relation to God, we find every- 
thing else in its place. Man's original state 
was one of harmony and concord. Sin against 
God introduced the terrible anarchy and con- 
fusion which everywhere reign. To return to 
God is to return to the balance of our life. 
All things, then, drop into due proportion, and 
the all-dominant force of religion obeyed and 



RELIGION — CULTIVATION OF INTELLECT. 2J 

cherished, will at once strengthen and yet dis- 
cipline the whole. A man thus ordered can 
pursue his mental training without distraction. 
The senses cannot draw him into sensuality 
and sloth. The mental powers themselves 
cannot assert too great an authority. Con- 
science sits happily enthroned. And he can 
well say, " My mind to me a kingdom is," a 
kingdom, indeed, where there is rank and or- 
der, due subordination, true authority, prompt 
obedience, and over which there ever shines 
the approving countenance of God, at once 
the stay, the defence, and the glory of this 
noble realm. 

And how is this religious life sustained, ex- 
cept by the knowledge of Him who is the ex- 
press image of the Father, and the shining 
ray of the central light of God ? To the stu- 
dent especially does Christ appeal. His re- 
ligion is the religion of intelligence. He is 
the Word. We are to know Him, and 
through Him to know God. The rule of His 
greatest apostle is to " prove all things, and 
hold fast what is good." He asks no alle- 



28 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

glance from a mind obscured by superstition, 
and bound down by unmeaning rites. If it 
be the student's highest aim to seek to know 
things as they are, and to rise above the mere 
seeming of sense into the world of pure ideas 
and right reason, then, indeed, he cannot find 
a better Teacher, a more trusty Saviour, than 
in that incarnate Word of God, whose utter- 
ance upon religion, the profoundest which has 
ever been given to man, was this — " God is a 
spirit, and they that worship Him must wor- 
ship Him in spirit and in truth." 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 



Daniel L, 4. — " Skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in 
knowledge, and understanding science." 






II. 

THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 

There is nothing in the history of the 
human mind so remarkable as the progress 
which physical science has made in modern 
times. It is true that there have been physi- 
cal investigators in every age, and two thou- 
sand years ago some of the problems of 
science, still unsolved, were discussed with 
peculiar clearness of vision and suggestive- 
ness ; nevertheless, we may almost fix upon 
the present century as being emphatically the 
age of natural science, in the course of which, 
geology, chemistry, and physics, at least, have 
been most industriously pursued and marvel- 
lously developed. In former days the man of 
science was a kind of exception to the general 
run of even cultured people. A dabbling of 
the shallowest kind in a few principles and a 
few experiments was considered sufficient to 



32 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

establish a reputation for scientific knowledge, 
while the study of natural science was left 
altogether to the members of the learned so- 
cieties, whose deliberations were considered 
by the general public to be a jargon of tech- 
nicalities and difficult words of little interest, 
and certainly of no worth. But a change has 
come over the relation of science to general 
life within even our own time. Some, now 
departed, whose memories are our constant 
pride and inspiration, and some who still 
breathe, and stir us with their genius and elo- 
quence, have made science popular and its 
study wide-spread. Governments in all na- 
tions recognize it in the schools which they 
aid to found. The universities give it a 
place in their curriculum. The addresses of 
its leaders are reported in daily papers, and 
become the chief topics of conversation in 
every thoughtful circle. Science has thus 
won almost the chief place in the intellectual 
pursuits of the age, and promises to assert 
her sway over every sphere of human life. 
In the outset, I deprecate the unsatisfactory 






THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 33 

relationship which has too often existed be- 
tween the expounders of religion and the 
teachers of science ; and I desire distinctly to 
warn students that there need not be any 
unworthy jealousy or prejudice in respect 
of either position. That there are some 
forms of religious belief which can never be 
squared with some forms of scientific belief 
must be freely admitted. But this only mili- 
tates against that special form of so-called 
religion on the one hand, and that special 
form of so-called science on the other. But 
this does not imply that science and reli- 
gion are finally and necessarily antagonistic ; 
that there cannot be even in the fulness of 
knowledge, and in the perfectness of faith, any 
point, where science and religion run together, 
and are found indeed but one ; neither does it 
compel the man who is travelling along the 
scientific line which leads to this perfect 
knowledge, and his fellow-man who is travel- 
ling along the religious line which leads to 
perfect faith, to be enemies rather than bro- 
thers, to attack each other's work, and to 

2* 



34 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

despise each other's aim. The fact is, the 
dogmatism of some religious men, like the 
dogmatism of some scientific men, is neither 
scientific nor religious. It wants the grace 
which should belong to the truth, wherever 
that truth is found, whithersoever that truth 
may be leading. I am quite willing to ac- 
knowledge that many religious teachers have 
spoken even irreligiously in this respect ; but 
then, is it quite certain that the scientific 
teacher on the other side has been always 
true to the principles of the science which he 
upholds ? The first care, therefore, that the 
student must have, is not to mistake the 
bigotry of religious persons for the voice of 
true religion, and at the same time not to 
accept as the conclusions of an undoubted 
science, the merely hypothetical assumptions 
even of the profoundest physicists. 

From one point of view, religion and science 
are altogether separate spheres, with differ- 
ent objects, and with differing methods. Of 
course science may be pursued, and indeed 
is only properly pursued, in a profoundly 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 35 

religious spirit, and with deeply religious 
aims, while religion may be studied in a 
scientific manner and dealt with as any other 
subject of human thought and meditation. 
But as the terms are generally used, the sep- 
aration between them is clear and distinct. 
Physical science consists in the observation, 
description, and classification of the pheno- 
mena of the material universe, with the dis- 
covery of the laws which govern all material 
changes ; and although the energies of the 
physicist sometimes carry him into other 
regions of knowledge, he goes generally at the 
peril of the principles which have governed 
him as a scientific man, and, on the whole, 
I think, with serious injury to his reputation, 
and with little, if any, gain in those spheres 
which lie beyond his own immediate province. 
As an expounder of the laws of the material 
forces, I recognize his authority, and gladly 
seat myself at his feet ; but when he applies 
the same principles of investigation to the 
phenomena of the human mind, and especially 
to theological and cosmogonical questions, 



36 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

he appears to me to be untrue to himself, 
and to exhibit himself as one of the great 
blunderers of the world. It is precisely the 
same with him who ventures out of the re- 
gion of philosophy and theology into that of 
science, without donning the garments of the 
scientist — using only the principles which 
have hitherto guided him. You cannot learn 
the laws of matter from the necessary con- 
ditions of the operations of mind. You can- 
not teach science by the exposition of the 
Bible. And He who has revealed Himself 
in all ages to mankind so that they may know 
Him, and love Him, and serve Him, has yet 
left man to use his own reason and the powers 
with which God has endowed him, in the 
observation of nature and the determination 
of her laws. 

This will, undoubtedly, present to the sci- 
ence student, some of the greatest difficulties 
of his course. Where so many great and 
wise men have stumbled, how can he expect 
to walk without tripping ? But, at least, he 
can learn to avoid the errors into which they 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 37 

have fallen. If he must leave the secure way 
of science and wander into the tempting paths 
of speculation, let him do it at his own risk, 
and after clear warning. Do not expect that 
men will listen with deference to your utter- 
ances when you have abandoned your prin- 
ciples, and speak with all the certainty of 
science, in the midst of the doubtfulness of 
pure speculation. Indeed, the charge of 
flippancy and shallowness may be hurled 
against you, if you meddle without experi- 
ence and skill in those branches in which sci- 
ence has no record, and where she leaves you 
without her law. So, also, your success in 
scientific study will depend upon your strict- 
est adherence to the principles which govern 
it. You must be the patient watcher for the 
changes of nature. For you, not a single step 
is safe unless it pass along the sure highway 
of observation and experience. You must 
test your laws by experiment, and although 
the wonderful insight, which seems almost 
creative in its force and action, may take you 
from a single example to a wide generaliza- 



38 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

tion, be certain always that you have the fact, 
and are not merely dealing with the creation 
of your restless fancy. 

And yet in all this you may be profoundly 
religious. A certain enthusiasm of heart, and 
a deep moral purpose are as needful for true 
advance in science as the clear light of the 
understanding itself. One of the most elo- 
quent of modern physicists has freely recog- 
nized, (and I think gross injustice has been 
done him in the fact that this recognition on 
his part has not received from us its proper 
estimate) that over and above man's under- 
standing " there are many other things 
appertaining to man whose prescriptive rights 
are quite as strong as that of the understand- 
ing itself," and these have their place and 
exercise their influence. Awe, Reverence, 
and Wonder, Poetry and Art, the Beautiful 
and the Good and the Religious, all belong 
to this manifold human nature, and must have 
their freedom and do their work. The un- 
derstanding, without these, would die of inani- 
tion, as these, without reason, would consume 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 39 

themselves and be destroyed. Hence must 
you preserve a due measure and balance of 
your being, giving to all your powers their 
fullest scope, and recognizing the laws which 
must govern each and all. 

The question here naturally occurs, May 
the study of science afford illustrations, en- 
forcements, helps to a religious life ? I boldly 
answer, Yes ! In the first place, both re- 
ligion and science rest upon truth. Science 
deals with truth, and with nothing else, and 
is only the human knowledge of truth, gained 
by the exercise of the human understanding 
and reason. But religion, at least any re- 
ligion worthy of the name, is also dependent 
upon truth. Some men appear to teach a 
religion and to rejoice in one that may 
chance to be altogether founded upon false- 
hood — the religion of pretence, chicanery, 
and mere seeming. But of such religion I 
do not speak to-day. Such religion is not 
that of Christ. Such religion cannot be 
gained by the wise and fair student of the 
Word of God. The Bible is one long testi- 



40 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

mony to truth and righteousness. It is the 
record of God's leading men to what is right, 
and doubtless through much that is perplexing, 
oftentimes in their failure and mistake ; but 
everywhere the witness for truth is clear and 
distinct. God is ever seen, restoring the err- 
ing, teaching the ignorant, even overruling, 
and, if need be, striking down the base, the 
wicked, and the liar. What is the psalm, but 
the holy breathing after goodness and truth ? 
In the wildest utterance of ecstacy, in the 
sometimes burning hatred of individually or 
nationally felt wrong, still the all-triumphant 
faith in God is, that He is the True one and 
the Good one, and will establish truth and 
justify the good. The prophets only point to 
this all-dominant law of righteousness, and 
appeal from earth to heaven, and declare 
their faith in Him who will establish His 
kingdom and rule in equity and justice. And 
what is the grandest revelation of all but the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life? Truth was 
the constant theme of His discourses. He 
was the witness to the truth, and died in His 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 41 

great testimony. And on that grave, empty 
through His victory, there has been built the 
glorious edifice of the truth of God. In- 
deed, some of the builders that have labored 
there, may have sought to lay the lines of its 
masonry in falsehood and deception ; but 
God Himself has sent the trial and the proof, 
and ever burns out from His growing temple 
the hay and stubble with which men would 
have set up a lie. It is truth, then, which re. 
ligion recognizes. It is truth which science 
seeks. They cannot be irreconcilable, and 
finally they must be one. 

There is another consideration which will 
greatly help in the good understanding to 
which the scientific student may come with 
the religious man, and which, indeed, shall 
enable the devout to be scientific, and the 
scientific to be devout. It is the recognition 
of the fact, that no finality of conception has 
been reached in either sphere. So rapidly do 
we pass from discovery to discovery, that we 
are unable to see how imperfect our con- 
ceptions really are, and how much one great 



42 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

law is a development from that which pre- 
ceded it, and more or less renders the former 
to be in a sense incorrect, or at least incom- 
plete. The very principles of some of our 
sciences have been reversed within a few 
years. No man will undertake to maintain 
that his scientific conception of the universe 
may not receive — indeed, will not receive — 
great modifications, as the ever-extending 
glory of the world opens before the human 
mind. Dogmatism is, therefore, impertinent 
as well as unphilosophical. " Thus we see 
it, " is the language of the wise, the humble 
man. " Thus it is, " is only the vain boast of 
the empty fool. 

And so is it in religion. Men's conceptions 
are ever changing, growing in their sweet- 
ness, in their scope. The finality of Revela- 
tion can be held only by that Church which 
itself has come to the end of all intellectual 
and moral life. So long as God has loving 
souls upon the earth to worship and to love 
Him, so long will He ever open before them 
wider displays of His nature and His work. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 43 

In the one subject of criticism of the Book, 
we have only begun to study and to learn. 
The interpretation of the Bible is itself, a mat- 
ter for each age, and grows in fulness and 
depth as each age brings its learning, its 
piety, its devotion. That great truth of the 
Divine Fatherhood, the very centre of the 
religion of Jesus Christ, is now only, begin- 
ning to take hold of the mind and heart of 
the Christian Church, and who can tell what 
rich truths of the Divine nature and the work 
of our Lord, the future will not yet reveal ? 
It was the glorious utterance of the pastor of 
the Pilgrim Fathers that God had "yet much 
light to flash forth from His Word." And 
what are we, brethren, that we should sup- 
pose ourselves to have learned all, and to 
have exhausted the fulness of that Eternal 
Spirit ? Oh, then, ye wrangling theologians 
and physicists, stay your contentions ! You 
are men, toiling up the same great mountain 
height, but on different sides. " A preci- 
pice," cries the one party. " Nay," answers 
back in angry tones the other, " 'tis a pleas- 



44 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

ant slope and a fertile valley." A " river," 
shout these in return, " and over it a bright 
sunshine." Back comes the reply with 
rude and scornful laughter, " 'Tis a mountain 
tarn, dark and cold, and deep, and over it are 
resting only the skirts of the storm, now and 
then perhaps lifted for an instant by the driv- 
ing wind.'' " Peace, ye mountain climbers," 
seems to speak a Voice from the summit. 
" Ye are on different sides ; but with pa- 
tience, and quiet toil, and rather cheerful 
encouragement to each other, at last, per- 
chance in the far distant ages, perhaps 
even in that other condition to be attained 
only by the transfiguring of death, ye shall 
all stand upon the mountain, and with Me 
gaze at the whole scene beneath you, and 
know with perfect knowledge, and see with 
the vision of the immortals." 

But, it may be asked whether the study of 
science is to be pursued without any religious 
thoughts being associated with it ? Cer- 
tainly not. If the religious man devotes him- 
self to the pursuit of nature he will, assuredly, 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 45 

find therein opportunities for the exercise of 
his religious faculties, and illustrations of the 
goodness and glory of God. To search into 
physics by means of theological or moral 
principles is the method of a past and ignor- 
ant age. But to search into physics with 
only atheism as the spirit of the search, is to 
rush into a superstition as gross and as 
deadly as before. The review of causes may 
not include the first or the final cause, but he 
will be indeed purblind who cannot recognize 
a God in nature, and control all his study of 
her various ways by the sense of the obliga- 
tion which he owes to Him. If this were not 
so, he who utterly denies the being of God 
would be the best student of the natural 
world, and this has by no means been illus- 
trated in experience and history. Some of 
the most earnest, the most gifted physicists, 
have been most religious men ; and even 
those who, ceasing to be strictly scientific, 
are yet doubtful as to the issue of the philoso- 
phy which they apply to the problem of ex- 
istence and life, are still unwilling to relin- 



46 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

quish the quest for a personal all-governing" 
God, and in their best moments when reason 
is clearest, and their powers most vigorous, 
cheerfully acknowledge that the system which 
absolutely excludes the Eternal One has little 
claim upon their understanding, their imagi- 
nation, their conscience, and their heart. 

This aspect of the question may be illustra- 
trated by a reference to some other of those 
spheres of human nature which are not alto- 
gether covered by the understanding. There 
is, for example, the sense of the beautiful. 
Now this in pure science can have no place, 
and in the investigation of the physicist must 
be utterly and rigorously excluded. But it 
would be a lame science which destroyed the 
feeling of the beautiful, although this may be- 
long specially to the artist and the poet. No 
men, perhaps, have a keener sense of the 
beauty of natural objects than those who gaze 
upon them with the insight of true knowledge 
— understanding their causes and seeing the 
one grand law which embraces all within its 
certainty. Shall the physicist shut his eye 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 47 

to these beauties of the world? Shall lie 
know nothing of form and color, of sweep of 
outline, perfection of figure, balance, harmony 
and grace ? Must he close his ears to the 
mighty music of the worlds ? Can he never 
allow the soft sense of nature's fulness to rest 
upon his spirit like the touch of the caressing 
mother upon the head of the child she bears, 
and will no soft light from her unutterable 
sweetness shine upon his heart and make him 
glad with the gladness that is all her own ? 
Surely not. There is a rapture in some of 
the communions which the physicist holds 
with nature that passeth the highest delight 
of feast and mirthful bravery. 

Morals, too, may find some place in the 
recognition of our student. It is not for him 
to seek facts and their relations, in order that 
he may find the law of right illustrated, that 
he may gather some new sanction for the 
eternal verities of goodness, purity, and jus- 
tice. But I mistake much the spirit of mod- 
ern science if it has no regard for conscience, 
and for the environment of righteousness 



48 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

which the wise man everywhere joyfully ac- 
cepts. The very order and harmony, the 
" adjustment of internal and external rela- 
tions," which the subtler minds of the day are 
perceiving in all things — these must bring 
with them the sense of that higher order and 
harmony, by which all natures have been 
bound, that law which gathers into its safe 
keeping the lowly monad, which rolls its 
thunder of condemnation, or sings its song of 
approval in the human heart, and finds its 
highest seat in the bosom of God Himself 

So is it with the principle of religion. The 
man of science will not gain his highest pur- 
pose if he seek in the subject of his learning 
to find the supreme God ; but we are sadly 
out in our estimate of the best expounders of 
nature if they have not, even on the merely 
scientific ground, an undefined, perhaps a 
hidden sense, that Some One has moved 
along the lines of life and being, and has left, 
if indeed the faintest footprints, yet the foot- 
prints of His going. And surely he who has 
the sense of God's presence within his soul, 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. - 49 

who has heard His voice in conscience, and 
has seen Him in the face of Jesus Christ, 
may go along the pathways of his study, 
now, not only with understanding, not only 
with a troop of laws of causation, conse- 
quence, and evolution, but with another atten- 
dant — fair-robed Faith ; and she will point to 
all the scenes, once only scenes of order, state- 
ly edifices of material building, and lo ! in 
every passage, hall, and chamber, the devout 
man will find a presence, will hear a tender 
voice, will feel a touch of love, and recognize 
a Father. Now, the world is a home, and he 
a child, heir of its glory and joyous in its bless- 
edness. Now, between the lines of the great 
formulae which describe the sweep of star and 
sun, he can read also written, "The heavens 
declare the glory of God and the firmament 
showeth His Handiwork." The flowers may 
open their petals and disclose the wonderful 
selections which nature has made, fitting 
them for their place, for the visiting of the 
insect, and the distribution of their seed. 
But he will also hear the words which their 
3 



50 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

odor seems to breathe : " Consider the lilies 
of the field how they grow, they toil not, 
neither do they spin, yet I say unto you that 
even Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these. God so clothed 
the grass of the field." The birds will still 
reveal to him the steps of being and the care- 
ful adjustment of element and life, but he 
will see inscribed in golden letters round the 
pages of the very record of the wise and 
careful observer, the tender utterance for the 
humble sparrow : " And one of them shall 
not fall on the ground without your Father." 
Then gathering all his knowledge he will 
raise it into a glorious song, and cry as he 
remembers God's love for himself: " When I 
consider the heavens the work of Thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou 
hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art 
mindful of him ? or the son of man, that 
Thou visitest him ? O Lord our Lord, how 
excellent is Thy Name in all the earth." 

Some persons of religious nature and 
habits, view with considerable alarm, the ad- 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 5 1 

vance of science in our day. They seem to 
think that the throne of God is being under- 
mined, and that the end of this progress will 
be to " bow the Supreme Being out of His 
universe." There is somewhere a foolish say- 
ing that Newton, by his discovery of the law 
of gravitation, " had banished God from the 
solar system," and there are religious people 
equally foolish who have a kind of half dread 
that this irreverent sentiment has some 
truth in it. The first and prime necessity for 
a religion worth holding is that it should be 
true ; and if science help to purge away the 
untruths which have gathered around even 
the true faith, we need only rejoice and re- 
cognize in her a trusty handmaid of God. 
But, it seems to me, that the results of science 
have altogether tended to the establishment 
of religion more firmly in the heart of every 
wise and good man ; and even the specula- 
tions which in some cases issue in the wildest 
hypotheses, only more clearly bring out the 
existence and the attributes of God. What 
science may do with ecclesiastical religion I 



52 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

have no very great care, and even the rela- 
tion of science to theology appears only to 
promise the purification of the latter study 
from the dominance of the schools, and the 
mere tyranny of custom. But to religion, the 
religion of Jesus Christ, science brings only 
welcome aid. The order of nature, which 
has been so strikingly exhibited in the ever- 
widening range which is discovered for law, 
and the economy of nature, which in the con- 
servation of forces has been illustrated of late 
on every side, furnish remarkable analogies 
for the great truths of the unity of the God- 
head, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, 
which form the leading principles of the 
Christian verity. What does science teach 
us in ever new and ever widening spheres ? 
Simply the persistence of law, the inflexibility 
of causation, the unchangeableness of result 
in the given unchangeableness of conditions. 
Interpret this in respect of moral and spiritual 
things, and what have we — (here we enter 
upon the domain of the metaphysician and 
the theologian) — but the one eternal omni- 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 53 

present intelligence and will — (will, I say, 
necessarily, for to stop at force, is to read the 
enigma of the universe one step behind that 
at which we have arrived in reading the 
enigma of the world of consciousness) — ever 
the same, ever, therefore, true, right, highest, 
utterly to be trusted, never deceiving, never 
failing, never changeable. I rejoice, as I be- 
hold the magnificent order of the universe 
rise before me at the bidding of some almost 
magician of this late-born child of reason ; 
wonder yields to delight, and delight swells 
into completest confidence. Did I ever in 
evil hour, doubt the power, and the wisdom, 
and the love ? In hideous dreams, have I 
ever seen vile phantoms of evil, who seemed 
to thwart the course of goodness, and to mock 
at right and truth ? Have I ever listened to 
the base promptings of my lower soul, and 
for an instant, thought that life was only the 
battle-scene of an eternal evil contending 
with eternal good ? Have I ever conceived of 
chance and fortune, of hazard, or even devil- 
crossings of the will of God ? Then, may I 



54 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

for an hour, quit the companionship of holy- 
men of old when they have spoken some sad, 
desponding words, and learning that there is 
an eternal order, come back to understand 
better their broken cries and their mysterious 
musings, and to find that knowledge, learnt 
to-day, has joined with faith that triumphed 
ages back, and still proclaims that God rules 
in the heavens and governs upon earth, 
taking perhaps a still sweeter echo in the 
words, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever." 

And what shall we say of that grand force 
of redemptive grace which has set going a 
new spiritual life to act and react until the 
universe is filled with the fulness of God ? 
" Nothing is lost," science tells me. Nature 
conserves all, will not, cannot allow aught to 
slip away and pass into nothingness. Is it 
mere poetry, my friends, when I read these 
words, and follow with an almost bursting 
heart the exhibition of this great conserving 
law, that I am irresistibly reminded of Him 
who " came to seek and to save what was 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 55 

lost, "of Him who "willeth not the death of 
the sinner, but rather that he should turn 
from his error and live " ; of Him to whom 
all things shall be subdued, " when the Son 
Himself shall be subject unto Him that put 
all under Him, that God may be all in all." 

There are two points to which I desire to 
refer as I close. 

The first relates to the care, which the 
scientific student must observe, when he 
transfers his attention from the objects of his 
proper pursuit to other occupations. It has 
not been helpful to the psychology of this 
generation, that so many of those who have 
endeavored to expound it, have approached it 
with the spirit and almost with the method 
with which they conducted their researches 
into nature. It is very doubtful whether the 
physiological study of mind has been really 
helpful to mental science. Though fully grant- 
ing- the concomitance of the brain in all men- 
tal operations, we have yet to learn that the 
fullest knowledge of brain-conditions even 
suggests the mode of discussing phenomena 



56 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

of consciousness. Indeed, in the moral scien- 
ces, generally, the physicist seems to me to 
be sadly at fault. He seizes an opinion as 
readily as the most fanciful philosopher, and 
adds to the merely hypothetical character of 
his opinion, the more serious evil of dealing 
with it as if it were a physical law, seen in 
many instances, the result of careful induc- 
tion, tested by proved experiment. As an 
acute writer has lately observed, " Living in 
and breathing the pure atmosphere of physi- 
cal science is by no means a good school of 
discipline in the estimate of moral probabili- 
ties. Physical science has superstitions of its 
own, just as much as wonder or fear." How 
much these remarks will apply to the discussion 
of religion I may leave each of you to deter- 
mine for yourselves. When you have entered 
into this sphere of research your subject-mat- 
ter and your methods have alike changed. 

Finally, be careful that you do not forget in 
science that you have human duties ; that 
knowledge is, after all, not the supreme object 
of man's life ; that, indeed, all knowledge is 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 57 

but the means to that nobility of living which 
we gather up in the word service. It is the 
fashion to spurn and contemn the practical 
applications of scientific discovery ; but the 
best souls will always regard the issue of all 
they know in the welfare of their fellow-men. 
It is, perhaps, to be feared that of late the 
tendency of science has been to go off into 
speculations upon problems that are, fot the 
most part, insoluble. Natural science de- 
spises the inanities, the verbal frivolities of 
the middle-age schoolmen. Without defend- 
ing the schoolmen, let me warn students of 
science against the schoolmen's fault. The 
fine-drawn theories of life and its origin, the 
speculations concerning atoms, their move- 
ments, their size, their nature, may or may 
not be good exercises for reason, and perhaps 
still more noble subjects for fancy and im- 
agination. But science may have humbler 
spheres for her energy, and yet lose nothing of 
her worth and nobleness. The greatest hero 
of the ages, His very enemies being the wit- 
ness, was He, Who, His followers say, bowed 

3* 



58 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

down from the heaven, and humbled Himself 
to human life. And so will it be for science ; 
yes, for all knowledges of man and all exer- 
cises of his understanding. Their glory will 
be their lowly service, their surest honor the 
good which they do to an ill-conditioned 
world. A hungering humanity is calling for 
bread ; give it not a stone. It asketh for an 
egg y do not offer it a scorpion. Prometheus 
stole fire from the heavens, and gave it to 
mankind. The jealous gods bound him to 
the rock, and set the vulture to tear out his 
ever-renewed vitals. There is no such fate 
for him who now brings down the highest 
heavenly possession, and grants it to man for 
his blessing and his good. Such an one is 
rather taken up to the seat of God, and shines 
in the glory of Him who became flesh and dwelt 
among men. Seek, then, by most exalted, 
ardent, sweeping thought, to include all things 
within your ever extending knowledge of na- 
ture's laws ; but come back again and down 
to needy men. There, raise the fallen, teach 
the ignorant,, heal the sick, and save the lost. 



RELIGION AND LAW. 



I. Timothy I., 8. — " The law is good if a man use it 
lawfully." 



III. 

RELIGION AND LAW. 

Of all the studies which present themselves 
for our notice there is not one that is of really 
greater importance than that of law, and yet 
it is probably the subject which will be sup- 
posed most technical and least interesting". 
The common opinion concerning law is that 
it is a dry, jejune pursuit, sombre as those 
London squares in which its votaries live, 
and dusty as the windows through which they 
look out upon the world around them. The 
common man is repelled by the mere appear- 
ance of a legal document. The unwieldy 
phrases, the archaic expressions, the circum- 
locution, the very material on which it is writ- 
ten, and the form of letter in which it is in- 
scribed — all combine to give an air of weari- 
someness which offends, almost disgusts, the 
busy mind and direct habits of the present 



62 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

day. Law, it is said, belongs entirely to the 
lawyer, and had better be left to professional 
persons ; it is only to be dealt with by such 
outsiders as may possess sufficient money to 
meet its expenses, or are furnished with small 
wisdom enough not to avoid its perils. 

Still, how important a place does the law 
occupy ! Every member of the State has re- 
lation to it, is subject to its operation, and is 
amenable to its sanction. We must all obey 
the laws. How necessary, then, that we 
should know, at least, the principles upon 
which they are based. Every occupation is 
environed by laws that govern it. All our 
intercourse with each other is defined and 
controlled by law. He who would live in- 
telligently, ought surely to know something 
of those rules under which he must spend his 
life, and by which he must direct his conduct. 
In free countries, moreover, almost every man 
has some voice in the making of laws. He is 
summoned to choose his representatives in 
Parliament and Congress, and to these are 
confided the highest functions of law making. 



RELIGION AND LAW. 63 

Many men are compelled, themselves, to dis- 
charge offices which involve the administra- 
tion of law. In ten thousand ways, in per- 
sonal, social, and public relationships, the 
citizens of a free State must deal with law. 
It is, therefore, a scandal in the present day 
that men are careless about the laws under 
which they live, and which they are called to 
administer. Without some knowledge of the 
principles of legislation, a man has not com- 
pletely furnished himself for his place in the 
great social order. 

By " law " we understand that collection 
of principles and rules which are to govern 
the conduct of men in relation to each other, 
and in the enforcement of which the State 
may proceed to inflict punishment. The law 
of the land does not necessarily embrace ev- 
ery sphere of life, and control every possible 
action. There are many things which a man 
ought to do ; but if he does not do them, the 
State would not do right by inflicting punish- 
ment. There are many things which a man 
ought not to do, but the law does not pro- 



64 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

ceed to prevent him from doing them. These 
are the actions, the principles of conduct in 
relation to which, must be found in what we 
call ethics, and upon these, religion may very 
properly exercise an important influence. 

The proper limits of law and morality must 
therefore be decided upon. Where must the 
State pronounce judgment? Where must the 
State be silent? When are the sanctions of 
public law to be set in force ? When may 
men be left to those other forces which oper- 
ate upon them — the sense of duty, the gener- 
al approval or disapproval of their fellows, 
the consciousness of obligation towards God ? 
It is of prime importance that we should de- 
cide upon the limits which mark law, moral- 
ity, and religion. 

Religion often comes into our life as an ef- 
ficient practical power. It may be doubted 
that there is any force which so moves men as 
religious conviction or excitement. Men do 
things from religious motives. Men abstain 
from doing things upon religious grounds. 
The history of the world is largely a history 



RELIGION AND LAW. 65 

of the operation of these religious instincts 
and sensibilities. Now, it becomes essential 
for the student of law to know how these 
things affect human life. Character and con- 
duct are moulded by the power of religion, 
and to deal with this effectually, whether as 
the maker or the administrator of law, a man 
ought to know something of the nature and 
power of the religious sentiment. 

This aspect of the question is of so much 
importance, that we recur to it again, al- 
though we referred to it in the sermon on the 
general relation of the student to religion. 
Then, as one of the forces of life, one of the 
operative powers of history, we saw that re- 
ligion required to be studied, and could be 
studied satisfactorily only when it was pos- 
sessed by the man himself. Now this may 
be specially applied to the lawyer. Many of 
the cases to which he must give attention, 
many of the points upon which he must pro- 
nounce judgment, and furnish counsel and ad- 
vice, include, or, in some way, are related to 
religion. Religion is precisely one of those 



66 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

things which a man, without it, cannot under- 
stand. He does not appreciate its working ; 
he is unable to gauge its power. What he 
calls fanaticism is wisdom, higher than the 
wisest ; what he may set down to error and 
folly is the supremest virtue, the divinest 
grace. Such a man is worse than useless in 
dealing with legal questions, which involve 
religious considerations. He sees only the 
definitions of the law ; he can estimate only 
by the rough, coarse rules of legislation. 
The finer shades of moral life he is unable to 
appreciate ; and whilst he is appointed to fur- 
ther justice and maintain the right, he be- 
comes often only the ally of the wrong doer, 
and the oppressor of the righteous. 

This may take a peculiar form of distinct- 
ness when we turn for a moment to one im- 
portant relation of religion to law, which in 
the future seems to promise issues of consid- 
able and far-reaching significance. Law in- 
deed, in some cases formally recognizes relig- 
ion. It has placed the State into peculiar 
relations with the different bodies of religious 



RELIGION AND LAW. 67 

persons — certainly, in countries where there 
is an establishment, and, to some extent, even 
in a land like ours, where all religions are 
equal in the eyes of the State. In a certain 
sense all sects and churches are recognized 
by the State and established, some in a very 
specific sense. The moment that any commu- 
nity of persons based upon religious grounds 
proceeds to hold property, the law takes cog- 
nizance of that fact, and the very conditions 
of their communion are subjects of contract 
and trust, and as such, often, come to be con- 
sidered in courts of justice. In some countries 
the State has assumed complete authority 
over these churches, laying down the rules 
of government, appointing the ministers, 
directing the ritual, even controlling the 
creed. 

Now, in view of such a condition of things, 
does it not become the duty of every lawyer, 
at least of such as may be called to deal with 
ecclesiastical law, to make himself acquainted 
with the principles of religion? And this 
cannot be done properly unless there is 



68 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

knowledge of religion in personal experience. 
Think of the blunders of the State in the past 
with respect to religion ; think of the difficul- 
ties which seem to be threatening in the pos- 
sible changes which appear imminent ; think 
of the acts of injustice which persecution, 
bigotry, superstition, have inflicted in the 
days gone by. And remember how many of 
these have arisen from the absolute ignorance 
of the true principles of religion displayed by 
the makers and administrators of law. Our 
mistakes in the future may not be so gross 
and not so evident as those in the past, but 
they may be as real, as offensive to men of 
fine spirit and true religious sensibility, as 
hostile to the best interests of mankind, as 
opposed to the truest progress of the race. 
I might almost lay the plea for religion upon 
the necessities of the profession, to which you 
will be devoted. At least it should not be 
dismissed by you as a matter worthy of no 
attention, claiming no regard. 

But there is not only this definite relation 
of religion to law which we have now dis- 



RELIGION AND LAW. 69 

cussed ; there is an indefinite place which 
religion may occupy, and this is worthy of 
attention. The function of law is concerned 
with the determination of duties, the ascertain- 
ment of cases in which the laws have been 
broken, and the appointment of penalty. 
Now, in all of these, religion may play an im- 
portant part. Indeed, roughly, the founders 
of law have always recognized this. In early 
systems of law the religious and legal sanc- 
tions have gone together, and the priest and 
the lawyer have been one and the same. 
One of the noblest bodies of law which the 
world can boast, from which men are still 
constantly drawing principles of legislation, 
and even some particular precepts, towards 
harmony with which modern enlightenment 
in many cases seems to tend, was associated 
intimately with a great religious system. 
Moses, who appointed the Levitical service, 
was also the legislator of the Jewish people, 
and intertwined with all his laws there are the 
Divine obligations, which change law into 
religion, which make disobedience not only a 



70 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

crime but a sin, stamping disloyalty with the 
still more degrading mark of the idolater. 
And all systems borrowing somewhat from , 
the Mosaic, and moreover, finding deep in 
human nature this relation of religion and 
law, have more or less associated religious 
obligations with the claims of the legislator. 
A notable example of this remains with us to- 
day in one of the commonest legal acts — viz., 
that of taking an oath. Here the truthfulness 
of the testimony is assured by the solemn 
sanction of an appeal to God. Some legal 
practices even retain the cumbrous and al- 
most stupid rule of refusing the testimony of 
a man who professes not to believe in God, 
and I suppose many persons are found who 
Avill shrink from a statement on oath, who 
would willingly venture to make it when they 
supposed themselves free from perjury. But 
this only suffices to show how the history of 
law involves in itself religious sanctions, and 
indeed, expresses in a rude way that common 
sense of humanity by which religion is held 
to occupy so important a place in our nature 



RELIGION AND LAW. 7 1 

and life, that the legislator cannot afford to 
disregard it. 

The lawyer, then, will have to deal with 
men over whom religion has more or less 
control. It is a power of such importance 
that it would be the part of a wise man to 
deal with it wisely. I know it is very easy to 
dismiss it altogether, to say in respect of this, 
" Oh, that belongs to another sphere. It is 
mere refining to talk of such a relation or to 
suppose it of any avail ; " but such a spirit 
only proves a narrow mind, and can fit its 
possessor for nothing better than the merest 
pettifogging, or the lowest legal stations. 
Wise men, who understand human nature, 
will regard it in a different light, and so find 
many an opportunity for the proper and suc- 
cessful use of the religious motives. 

In what delicate positions lawyers are 
sometimes placed ! The interpretation of 
contracts, the fulfilment of trusts, the adjust- 
ment of family difficulties, the settlement of 
property, the reconciliation of enemies, the 
determination of guilt— numberless other 



72 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

things which call for the skill of the lawyer, 
furnish abundant opportunities for the exer- 
cise of other and far higher gifts than legal 
acumen, nobler acquirements than the fullest 
acquaintance with principles and cases, a finer 
faculty than that which will conduct a cause 
to completest triumph. Even for the lawyer, 
what is legal is not always what is right. 
What may be just in the eyes of the law, may 
not always be kindest, wisest, nor at last, 
even most useful for the individual or for the 
State. A Christian lawyer, in the true sense 
of that term, is a man of immense value, not 
only to his client, but also to society. We do 
not mean by that, the man who figures as a 
philanthropist, or takes a leading place in the 
religious world; but that man who guides 
those who entrust their affairs in his hands, 
not only with a lawyer's judgment, but with 
the wider, nobler conscience of one who is 
seeking the right and the good — what is best 
for one, best for all. He will not, perhaps, 
always gain a trial, but often he will prevent 
the legal action altogether. He may not only 



RELIGION AND LAW. 73 

get a criminal off, but he may be the means 
of setting right the wrong, and restoring the 
erring. Such men may be rare, though I am 
not quite sure that they are as rare as the 
common opinion sometimes would have us 
think. At least, young men, it rests with you 
to swell the number ; and thus not only to 
establish law, but to spread abroad righte- 
ousness. 

One of the most natural prospects for the 
lawyer is that of being called to administer 
law in the position of magistrate or judge. 
And here again religion will be an important 
ministrant. How many are the cases to deal 
with which there is required an instinct of 
justice ! The criminal is not merely a kind of 
beast that needs to be hunted down by the 
processes of law. Given the crime, then set 
the officers of justice upon its trail, let them 
track the wretch who committed it, drag him 
to the light, gather evidence which may over- 
whelm him with its conclusiveness, and then 
leave to the judge nothing but the barest duty 
of pronouncing sentence ! In some of the ex- 



74 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

treme cases of crime, perhaps, little more than 
this can be done ; but in how different a spirit 
may we not pursue our criminal classes ? 
There is a certain sacredness about justice 
administered by a man who recognizes some- 
thing other than the mere criminality of the 
evil deed — a light which shines in upon the 
prisoner, and indeed upon all men, helping to 
show the beauty of virtue and the hideous- 
ness of crime. Indeed, it seems to me that 
the whole of criminal law ought to be ren- 
dered more and more morally instructive than 
appears to be its character in our day. Law 
and crime now are as enemies. The breaker 
of the law seems to regard the law simply as 
a foe against which he is in constant and even 
natural hostility. Law should be rather the 
expression of the will of the State — almost 
like a mother's, with love and sorrow for the 
child who disobeys. The real evil is in the 
wrong spirit of its study. It is, I know, for 
scientific purposes, conveniently separated 
from morality and religion ; but it cannot be 
rightly understood, it cannot be rightly ad- 



RELIGION AND LAW. 75 

ministered, except by him who feels that in 
his awful character as judge, he to some ex- 
tent is sharing in the very dignity of God, 
and is invested with that sorrowful power 
which only seeks to repress evil that it may 
save the evil-doer. 

Closely allied with this is the character 
which it is becoming that the occupant of the 
bench, and indeed all who deal with law, 
should possess. There is nothing which so 
impresses the people of a country as the ex- 
pression of noble sentiments and the promul- 
gation of wise and good laws by men who 
themselves are animated by these sentiments, 
and whose lives are the best illustrations of 
the law which they proclaim. And, on the 
other hand, few things so tend to bring 
justice into contempt, and to spread far and 
wide a spirit of rebellion and criminal dis- 
obedience, as the bad character of those who 
are appointed to make and execute the laws. 
One of the first essentials to a well-ordered 
State is the incorruptibility of the bench, and 
this, we believe, we may proudly boast to 



76 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

have been gained in our country in this gen- 
eration. But this is by no means the only 
quality which he who deals in justice should 
possess. This may ensure confidence in de- 
cisions upon civil suits ; but we are now insist- 
ing upon the character and life which shall be 
a shining example in every relationship. 
The court of justice is assembled to establish 
righteousness, to punish fraud. What if the 
conduct of those who carry on its affairs will 
not bear the light of day ! The magistrate 
sits to punish the disorderly, the openly 
vicious, the violent, and the wrong doer. 
What if counsel and court, bench and bar, are 
themselves well known as breakers of the 
laws of morality, decency, and good order ! 
It is a scandal and a shame, an outrage upon 
public morals, a mockery of true justice, and 
leads the criminal only to calculate the 
chances of escape of punishment, and never to 
consider the wrong of which he may be 
guilty. The words of the apostle should sink 
deep into your hearts — " Thou appro vest the 
things that are more excellent, being in- 



RELIGION AND LAW. JJ 

structed out of the law, and art confident that 
thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of 
them which are in darkness, an instructor of 
the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the 
power of knowledge and of the truth in the 
law. Thou, therefore, which teachest another, 
teachest thou thyself? Thou that preachest 
a man should not steal, dost thou steal ? 
Thou that sayest a man should not commit 
adultery, dost thou commit adultery ? Thou 
that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacri- 
lege ? Thou that makest thy boast of the 
law, through breaking the law, dishonorest 
thou God?" Remembering ever, that civil 
law is only a part of the higher and wider law 
of right with which religion in every point 
deals, we shall find these words searching 
into the very depths of the soul, and into the 
most hidden secrets of our life. 

This must suffice for our consideration of 
the general relation of religion to law, and the 
need which there is for those who wish to be- 
come lawyers not to forget religion. I shall 
now refer briefly to some of those dangers 



78 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

which attend your special study, and safety 
from which can be found in attention to the 
religious side of your nature. 

In the first place, the student of law has to 
deal very much with mere words and the 
definitions of the meaning of words. Laws 
express in words certain requirements of con- 
duct. The legislator must, therefore, use 
words so as to include the actions to which 
he refers, and the student is bound to study 
carefully the scope of the words used in the 
practical work of the law. Much of his busi- 
ness will be the endeavor, on the one hand, 
to include a certain action within the meaning 
of a word, or, on the other hand, to exclude 
it from that meaning. Thus it is that the 
lawyer comes to be a man of words. He is 
ever dealing with them, and thus contracts a 
twofold habit — that of running everything 
into the form of words, and that of dealing 
with words in some artificial and strained 
way. 

The moral effect of this is very evil. It 
begets a disposition of criticism generally on 






RELIGION AND LAW. 79 

the verbal side. Man, and nature, and life, 
even God and His relationships, come to be 
locked up in the merely legal definitions of 
words, and the result is something like that 
which fell upon the Scribes and Pharisees in 
the time of our Lord. Words become the 
dominants of character and life, and the pro- 
found principles of morals and religion are 
broken up and destroyed in the multiplication 
of little rules and verbal niceties ; the laws of 
conscience and of God dwindle into the cap- 
tious criticisms of mere legal precepts. 
Against this danger the moral and spiritual 
laws of Jesus Christ will effectually guard. 
They are broad and general. They are care- 
less of legal niceties, and depend, not upon the 
mere logic of the understanding, but upon the 
more direct and immediate logic of the heart. 
Life, under their influence, will be a growth, 
and not an argument. It will have nature 
and not artifice. In the free spirit of the life 
of Christ, the lawyer will become a man, eman- 
cipated from the shackles of maxims and pre- 
cepts, with heart and conscience operating 



80 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

rightly, not because of rule, but from the 
force of an indwelling inspiration. 

Another peril closely allied to the former, 
and indeed growing out of it, is the loss of a 
profound sense of moral obligation in respect 
of the conduct of life. For legal purposes 
the lawyer must always ask the question, 
What is the law ? and acts must be done or 
refrained from because of the injunction of 
the Legislature. The ultimate appeal in 
cases of legal import must be to what is com- 
manded, and not to what is right. In this 
respect the province of the legislator is dis- 
tinct from that of the administrator. In 
making the law, the former must consider 
what is dictated by the principles of morality, 
for what is morally bad cannot be politically 
good. But, in applying the law, the lawyer 
can only inquire what is the law, and by this 
he is bound in the very letter. Even in such 
extension of the law as is supplied by equity 
or the interpretation of the court, still the 
spirit of the law must be observed, and de- 
parture from its strictness must be ever 



RELIGION AND LAW. 8 1 

jealously watched. Now, the habits of mind 
produced by such duties necessarily tend to 
lead the lawyer away from the consideration 
of the absolute law of right, by which alone 
the highest development of human life can 
be attained. He judges by the law of the 
land, and not by the law of conscience. Re- 
ligion will supply the force counteracting this. 
Religious truth, and the moral principles 
dependent upon it, ever lift the soul into 
communion with eternal right. Communion 
with God will purify the heart from the local 
and temporary devices of municipal law, and 
raise the spirit far above its narrowing and 
depressing influence. Jesus Christ was en- 
tirely free from all such limited views of life 
and its duties, and he who knows Christ, who 
obeys his laws, who has come into commun- 
nion with the sufferings of Jesus, and looks 
to Christ as his Master and Lord, will find 
that He ever regards life and its duties in its 
relation to what is rio-ht, without regard to 
circumstance or person, except as these may 
modify the application of principle. In a 

4* 



82 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

word, principle becomes such a man's guide 
and stay. It will be a light for dark ways, a 
strength and support in the hour of uncer- 
tainty, conflict, and dismay. The man is no 
longer lost in the lawyer ; the lawyer is 
glorified in the man. 

One of the customs of the profession of the 
law, by which a man is concerned with the 
interests of one side only in a legal cause, 
may produce an ill effect which it is important 
to observe. It is commonly argued, and 
probably with truth, that the real state of 
affairs is best discovered, and justice most 
completely done in any particular case, by the 
parties on either side doing all they can to 
establish their own view. It is, of course, the 
business of the judge to hold the "balance 
evenly, and to direct proceedings in their 
legitimate course. The jury is appointed to 
seek out and inquire into the truth ; but the. 
professional lawyer is obliged to do the best 
he can for his party, and on the other hand 
to damage his opponent's case as much as is 
possible. All this, I believe, can be done in a 



RELIGION AND LAW. 83 

perfectly honorable and straightforward way. 
But none the less it is a fact that the tendency 
of such professional duty is to develop in the 
mind the disposition of the mere partisan. 

Religion supplies the corrective of this. It 
extends its gracious countenance to every 
one. Religion has only one suit, and that 
has been long since given up by the incarna- 
tion of the Son of God, who has reconciled 
all men to His Father. There is no separa- 
tion, no contention, in Christ's true life. 
" All men are one in Jesus," and " He is our 
peace." Christ Himself refused to be a 
partisan. When appealed to, to speak to the 
brother who was injuriously depriving the 
other of his inheritance, He declined to be a 
judge and divider, but took occasion to teach 
men a noble lesson against covetousness, and 
pointed out wherein consisted a man's real 
wealth. The narrower spheres of legal strife 
can thus be changed for the more generous 
sympathies of the Gospel. Here we may 
learn not to be for an individual, not for a 
party, but for all men and for God. 



84 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

The practical workings of the legal pro- 
fession furnish one other danger against 
which a Christian man needs to be upon his 
guard. In the law men are not introduced to 
the better sides of human life. It is true that 
suitors are supposed to be seeking for justice ; 
but men of the world need hardly to be told 
that the sense of justice is somewhat lost in 
the sense of personal claims for advantage 
and gain. " I will have justice/' is often only 
the mask for " I will be revenged ; " and the 
lawyer has many a revelation of the worst 
sides of our poor, frail, sinful humanity. In 
criminal law this is specially the case. The 
opening up of the details of crime is often 
offensive and shocking. Now, familiarity 
with such scenes, and such manifestings of 
human wickedness, may blunt the finer sides 
of the lawyer's own heart. Justice takes on 
an inexorable sternness ; the skilful counsel 
becomes only a special pleader; he who aims 
at conviction questions the existence of all 
goodness ; he who defends the criminal avails 
himself of some point of legal distinction, 



RELIGION AND LAW. 85 

probably only too doubtful of the prisoner's 
innocence. From such influences a man must 
have a unique nature if he can himself escape 
moral deterioration. In some positions, such 
as that of the court and counsel in our police 
administration, men can avoid the evil only by 
special grace. 

Hence must the lawyer have some region 
of retirement and refreshment, where an al- 
together pure life may be experienced and a 
perfect companionship attained. The busy 
toiler in the overcrowded city must, on occa- 
sions, escape from the pollutions, the fetid air, 
the confined habits, to the pure climate of the 
seaside, to fresh country life, to the fine, 
heavenlike region of the mountain top. Here 
he is recreated, braced, and able to withstand 
the ill-conditions of his home, and occupation 
in town. So must the man, whose dealings 
are with the immoral sides of human nature, 
find safety from the corrupting associations 
of his common life, in contemplation of the 
heavenly realities, and in communion with the 
unseen ; in the inspiration which is obtained 



S6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

from the presence of God and Christ, in retreat 
from the destructive habits of his common 
career. From the struggle of revengeful men 
he retires to the calm of the loving God; 
from the sad view of man in his worst hours, 
a slave to passion, a ready servant of the 
devil, he turns to behold the All-pure, the All- 
true, the All-good. If there be a vision of sin, 
it is sin conquered by patient and tender 
virtue ; if even the spectacle of the horrible 
crime of Calvary, it is that very crime 
changed by the pure heart of the Sufferer, by 
the all-righteous purpose of God, into the 
beneficent, healing, saving power of redeem- 
ing grace, with its dark shadow lost in the 
blaze of the triumphant light of love. 



THE ART OF HEALING. 



LukE IV., 23. — "Physician, heal thyself.' 



IV. 

THE ART OF HEALING. 

Our Lord's choice of this proverb in refer- 
ence to Himself was peculiarly appropriate, 
when we remember how large a portion of 
His work was the healing of the sick. It is 
probable that already His fame had gone 
abroad, not only as a teacher, but as a healer, 
and that the wonderful cures which He had 
effected caused His name to be in all men's 
mouths, and led to the expectation in Naza- 
reth, to which He referred, that He would do 
in His own home what He had already been 
doing in Capernaum. 

All through His career He presents Him- 
self as the Great Physician. He gives eye- 
sight to the blind, He cleanses the leper, He 
bids fevers depart, He restores the lunatic to 
their sound mind. Everywhere He shows 
Himself as the Son of God, who has His fin- 



90 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

gers upon the springs of being, and can give 
life, and ward off death, and drive away dis- 
ease. Christ has thus established a peculiar 
relation between His religion and the sick, 
which the history of Christianity and the ten- 
dency of civilization have developed to a 
remarkable degree. Very intimate has been 
the connection between religion and the phy- 
sician's art. To no one ought religion to 
appeal more strongly than to the medical stu- 
dent. 

Religion has always a peculiar claim upon 
a man when he has been cut down by sick- 
ness. We have no sympathy with that spirit 
which puts off all thought of religion until the 
time of disease. Common, alas, though this 
is, it combines in itself the base conduct of 
the knave and the fool. If religion be the 
service of God, it seems to be very like 
cheating Him of His service if we turn to 
Him only when we are sick. When the pow- 
ers are fresh and strong, when, indeed, ser- 
vice might have some worth in it, we neglect 
God, and only regard Him and pay Him our 



THE ART OF HEALING. Ql 

duty when we are stricken down, feeble and 
useless. Besides this, it is folly, for the pro- 
bability is that the time of sickness will be the 
very worst time for seeking after the Eternal 
One. Then the soul is wrapped in the 
clouds of night. Then, shadows overwhelm, 
and the poor spirit, worn by pain, cowering, 
in terror, shrinking from the thought of 
death, knows not how to seek, how to find 
its only resting-place. And yet the mercy of 
God in Jesus Christ will accept even such an 
one. " He hath anointed me," said the pro- 
phet, speaking of our Lord, " to preach the 
Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal 
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to 
the captives, and recovery of sight to the 
blind, to set at liberty them that are bound ; " 
and although the lamp be lighted late, and 
only flickers with a feeble flame, yet "the 
smoking flax " we know, Christ will never 
quench. When all have turned away from 
the wretched, sick, and dying spirit, it may 
receive the consolation of the religion of Cal- 
vary, and therein will be found the mercy 



92 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

which saves unto the uttermost. How often, 
therefore, the physicians of the body and the 
ministers of the soul are found together ! The 
laws of health may have been broken, but 
that is only the greater reason why the 
healer of the sick should attend. The laws 
of spiritual life may have been still more neg- 
lected ; that only renders more urgent the 
presence of one who may seek, by the com- 
forts of religion, to bind up a broken heart 
and heal a wounded spirit. 

Another aspect of the intimate connection 
which religion has with medicine may be seen 
in the important part which the former has 
taken in the development of the latter. At 
one time religious ministers were almost the 
only physicians, and I am not sure that the 
opposition with which some of the earlier ad- 
vances in the art of healing were met by the 
Church, may not have arisen quite as much 
on professional grounds as for supposed reli- 
gious or superstitious reasons. But in later 
times religion has always aided and fostered 
the healer's profession. To regard the sick 



THE ART OF HEALING. 93 

at all, to minister to their needs, to treat 
them in any other fashion than that of the 
beast, which separates the wounded member 
of the herd from the rest and drives it away 
to perish and to die — this has become the 
spirit of modern civilization, and has been 
quickened, if not altogether produced, by the 
influence of Christianity. Rome and Greece 
had no hospitals. Philanthropy, which deals 
tenderly with the ills and sorrows of the hu- 
man race, is the child of religion ; and it will 
be a sad day for the weak, the diseased, the 
lunatic, and the afflicted, if the world were to 
give up its faith in Christ, and to turn to a 
scientific or philosophic atheism as the ulti- 
mate teaching of a progressive age. These 
schools of physic, these hospitals where 
young men are engaged in studying, and 
without which there would be little progress 
in the science and art of the physician, would 
at once be closed were it not for the sanction 
of religion and the generosity of the Christian 
Church. You may sometimes in your heed- 
lessness, in your thoughtless pride, laugh at 



94 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

the claims of religion. Remember, at least, 
that you owe to it your instruction, and the 
very opportunities of study, whereby you are 
enabled to attain the place which your am- 
bition may desire. 

But these are merely external and, as we 
may say, accidental relations of religion to 
your profession. Let us see if there are not 
more intimate grounds upon which I may ap- 
peal to you to yield yourselves to the claims 
of Christ. 

Consider, in the first place, the nature of 
disease itself. What is it ? It is the dis- 
organization of the human body, the improp- 
er action of some of the "functions of the 
physical nature, often arising from disregard 
of the laws of natural well-being. All disease 
is not connected with wrong, but a vast 
amount of the disease from which men are to- 
day suffering, is the direct and immediate 
result of immoral life ; in some cases that of 
the sufferer, in other cases that of those by 
whom the sufferer has been influenced. It is 
quite needless to give detailed examples of 



THE ART OF HEALING. 95 

this. My statement is a mere commonplace. , 
In this regard what is the true office of the 
physician in relation to disease ? Is it simply 
to arrest the mischief, to restore the body to 
its healthful action, to help nature in that effort 
which it will make to throw off the alien and 
destructive presence — in a word, merely to 
cure? Certainly not. A far-reaching and 
philosophical physician will aim not only at 
the recovery of the body, but at the destruc- 
tion of those very actions, that state of life, 
those habits of conduct which have caused 
the disease. The physician is a moral re- 
former as well as a physical healer. 

He must take his part too, in the preven- 
tion of those evil conditions which may 
render a man diseased without any fault of 
his own. Inheritance, companionship, neigh- 
borhood, all these develop and extend dis- 
ease. The uncleanness of the man who lives 
next door to me, the sanitary ignorance or 
neglect of the manager of my district, the 
greed of gain of the people whose works are 
situated near my home — these, and such 



g6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

things, may bring the most terrible infliction 
to my house, may spread a pestilence to 
which I shall fall a victim. Must the doctor 
wait for the evil to be present and operate, 
before he takes action ? Quite otherwise. 
The " profession " must be the guides of opin- 
ion here ; they must raise the alarm, give the 
instruction, direct, even create a public senti- 
ment. Unless they do this, they altogether 
fail of their high calling, and open themselves 
to the charge of being traders upon the sick- 
nesses, the death of their fellow-men — vul- 
tures that fatten upon the bodies of the dead. 
But who can tell the mighty power of reli- 
gion as an engine for the amelioration of man- 
kind, and for the improvement of the morals, 
alike of the individual and society? The vir- 
tues that spring from a faith in God are the 
virtues that lead to healthfulness and the 
enjoyment of life. He who serves God and 
follows righteousness has the promise of old 
age, with health and happiness. The courses 
that lead to disease, to the sudden cutting off 
of life, to the sun going down when it is yet 



THE ART OF HEALING. 97 

day — these are often best traversed, even 
reversed, by the power of religion. The 
sentiments that destroy selfishness, and com- 
pel men to regard each other, are nowhere 
found but in the light of the cross of Christ. 
The powers absorbed by the strife and 
struggle of the age, the passion for wealth, 
the ambition of renown, a place, and a name, 
these are only moderated and governed by 
the knowledge of Divine things, and the ex- 
perience of a life above the present, which yet 
refines and sublimes the lower. There is a 
wide sense in which our Lord is called a 
Physician, and the Gospel is spoken of as 
Gilead's balm. The minister of religion only 
acts under this great Healer ; and what are 
you, my friends, but the under-physicians in 
the Divine labor of lessening ill, and bringing 
back the world to its perfect wholeness ? 

The character of some diseases gives a still 
more specific character to the relation borne 
by religion to medicine. There are the dis- 
eases of the mind, where the body is only dis- 
organized, because its companion, friend, and 



98 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

mistress has first become deranged. How- 
many are the cases of ill health, where the 
doctor is called in, and consulted by anxious 
friends, even by the patient himself, and 
where he yet can give no adequate explana- 
tion of the too evident lack of health ! No 
active disease can be discovered, there is no 
functional derangement, every part of the 
body appears vigorous, orderly, healthful, 
and yet the poor sufferer is weak, sick, and 
weary. Physician after physician is appealed 
to. Medicine is tried. Honest men brave- 
ly say they can do nothing. Dishonest men 
practise and experiment upon the poor body. 
Hopes are raised, deferred, disappointed, and 
the art of healing is proved to be ineffectual 
to deal with all the ills to which our flesh is 
heir. Probably after a while disease presents 
itself; the veriest tyro in physic can observe 
it, but by that time it is too late, and another 
victim is added to the countless multitude 
who have either slipped out of life altogether, 
or have been relegated to the wearinesses of 
invalidism, because no one knew what was 



THE ART OF HEALING. 99 

the matter, and the hurt has only been slight- 
ly healed. 

When Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep, 
watched by the doctor and the attendant, she 
heaves a deep sigh, whereupon the kindly 
doctor says — 

" What a sigh is there ! The heart is sorely charged." 

And then confesses — 

"This disease is beyond my practice." 

And farther on — 

" More needs she the divine than the physician." 

In conversation with Macbeth himself, who 
asks — 

" How does your patient, doctor ?" 

He replies — ■ 

" Not so sick, my lord, 
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, 
That keep her from her rest." 

To this Macbeth answers — 

" Cure her of that. 
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
Cleanse the stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart ? " 



100 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Is this, indeed, the only answer ? — 

" Therein the patient must minister to himself." 

Is that all that any doctor can say? No won- 
der that the impatient king exclaimed con- 
temptuously — ■ 

" Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it." 

If that were the only reply the doctor could 
give, then, truly, in such diseases the scorn 
of Macbeth is well deserved. 

But there is another ministry for such. He 
is the wise physician who can combine, with 
his knowledge of the body, the more subtle 
knowledge of the soul. It is not medicine 
these patients need, but gentle searching into 
heart and conscience. The spirit wants the 
vigor, not the body. The conscience requires 
rest, and not the frame. He who would per- 
fectly heal should know this physic. If his 
own sorrows have been comforted, his own 
needs supplied, if the restless yearnings of his 
own spirit have been made content, if his own 
conscience has been satisfied — in a word, if 
he has found the true source of spiritual 
healthfulness, then may he, indeed, minister 



THE ART OF HEALING. IOI 

to the mind diseased, and be not only the 
physician, but also the divine. 

Believe me, friends, there is no art in this. 
It is not taught in any school, nor is the 
wondrous knowledge given by any professor. 
It is not written in the wisdom of the books, 
nor can it be learned except in the experience 
of your own heart and life. Thus you will 
gain the eye quick to see the spiritual evil, as 
now you can detect the bodily ill. The 
pathology of the soul can be studied only in 
the recesses of self-knowledge. Yourselves 
the healed, the strengthened, and the com- 
forted of God, it will be an easy matter to 
heal, and strengthen, and comfort others. 
Many are there, like the woman of the Gospel 
whom no physician can cure, but who, only 
touching the hem of Christ's garment, will 
feel themselves whole at once. Happy the 
physician who, conscious of his inability, can 
yet take the poor sick soul to that Healer 
who never fails ! 

We have thus spoken of the art of healing 
in some of those general aspects in which 



102 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

religion may be said to be very closely, bound 
up with it Let me now draw your attention 
to the effect which religion will produce upon 
the character of the physician. This is per- 
haps, as a practical matter, of supreme im- 
portance. 

Few men depend for effective work, more 
upon their character, than doctors. Perhaps 
the only class of persons whose labor be- 
comes useless when character has departed, 
in a more marked degree than that of physi- 
cians, is that of ministers of religion. With- 
out good reputation, these had better make 
no effort to gain a hearing and minister to 
Christ's Church. Of course, there have been 
cases well known and of public fame, of phy- 
sicians failing utterly on the moral side of 
their nature, and yet, by reason of a peculiar 
genius and indomitable energy, still gaining 
a name, and becoming wealthy and influen- 
tial. But such persons are rather the marks 
and beacons whereby we must direct our 
way, and avoid the dangerous places where 
we may become utterly wrecked. As a gen- 



THE ART OF HEALING. 103 

eral, almost universal, rule, the reputation of 
the physician must be spotless. Like the 
ancient knight, he must know no fear, and be 
subject to no reproach. 

Where can be found a better strength and 
inspiration for such noble life than in the 
religion of Jesus Christ ? The peasant of 
Nazareth was the politest, the most urbane 
man that ever lived. He adorned the social 
gathering, and shed a radiance most bene- 
ficent He knew the true secret of greatness 
— sympathy with the greatest number, and 
revealed and practised this, that you and I 
and all men might seek the same, and attain 
to the same perfect view of manners and 
habits of life. To this end, nothing is more 
helpful than the perfect purity and innocence 
which a powerfully religious spirit will ever 
conserve. There is danger lest this be lost by 
the physician. He comes into certain pecu- 
liar relationships with patients, especially 
those of the opposite sex, and some of that 
mystery, even that ignorance which helps to 
innocency, is forfeited. That all may have 



104 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

confidence in him, that he may be secure in 
the midst of temptations, that there may be no 
pruriency, no unholy irreverence, the physi- 
cian needs that character, the strength and 
grace of which religion supplies. Familiarity 
with us fallen creatures and our most private 
affairs is not helpful to the preservation of a 
high moral tone. This religion will furnish. 
It is itself a courtesy — a culture. It gives a 
light and a beauty to thought, and word, and 
deed, that are altogether its own. It will ren- 
der the healer the friend, the confidant, the 
wise helper of the family. Husband and wife, 
parents and children alike, will lean upon his 
Avisdom and his skill. His work will be as 
tenderly performed as a woman's, his pres- 
ence will be the purity of an angel of God. 

Another of the qualifications of a physi- 
cian is tenderness of heart and sympathy with 
the suffering. How much healing power is 
to be found in that complete trust which a 
patient comes to feel in his medical attendant, 
so that it is not always the most able and 
most learned men that are the best physi- 



THE ART OF HEALING. 105 

cians. We forgive a great deal to skill and ex- 
perience, but how much more welcome in the 
chamber of sickness is he who can respond to 
the sorrows of the hour, and in the family 
often plunged into deepest affliction, can be 
something more than the merely able com- 
batant with disease, even the friend, the 
adviser, the bringer of comfort ! It is a wise 
old saying that " the physician needs the eye 
of a hawk, the heart of a lion, and the hand 
of a lady " ; but how much are the softness 
and the delicacy of touch enhanced, when the 
courage is the courage of the really strong 
man, who is strong enough to feel pity, and 
brave enough to be gentle I 

Now, some sides of the training of the 
doctor are likely to numb the softer emotions 
of the heart. It is quite certain that a mere 
sentimentality — a condition of emotion easily 
aroused — is fatal to the physician's success. 
For diagnosis of disease, and still more in 
surgery, the mind must be altogether undis- 
turbed by any of the affections ; and in many 
cases, with severe will the healer must nerve 
5* 



106 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

himself to the task, and steel his heart against 
the distractions of sympathy and compassion. 
The scientific training of the medical pro-, 
fession still further operates in this direction. 
Disease has its laws as well as health. Pain 
is as much a factor in the great physical se- 
ries of antecedent and consequent as the fir- 
ing of the gun which propels the ball, and the 
gravitation which ever drags the ball down to 
the surface of the earth. The healer is, there- 
fore, compelled to note with care the physical 
antecedents, concomitants, and consequents 
of the functions of life. Indeed, these are 
his chief study, and he, in common with all 
physicists, is in peril of forgetting life's moral 
aspects. If there be no other difference, than 
the more or less of complexity, between the 
interactions of two substances in the test tube 
and the development of some vital fluid in an 
organ of the body, although the latter may be 
associated with the keenest pain, and, in 
some form or other, terminate in death, why 
should the medical practitioner experience, in 
the one case, a single thrill of emotion more 



THE ART OF HEALING. 107 

than is felt by the chemist in the other ? If 
absolute physicism is the ultimate resolution 
of the phenomena of all life, then varieties of 
emotion, so far as the will can control them, 
are impertinent and unscientific. To lose hu- 
manity in this way, would be one of the most 
serious drawbacks to the progress of the 
healing art, and yet this is the danger with 
which it is threatened in our day. 

This tenderness of heart is further imper- 
iled by the physician's familiarity with suffer- 
ing. Human nature is healthfully capable of 
only certain measures of activity in any of its 
spheres. All excitement, all action beyond 
this, is sure to operate to the destruction of 
the faculty or capacity which is excessively 
used. The overwrought mind becomes stu- 
pid and powerless, the too much excited 
sense is numbed, the emotion excited beyond 
measure grows languid and irresponsive. 
Hence the incessant sight of suffering renders 
the heart at last more callous and indifferent. 
Just as, at first, the young student shrinks from 
the sickening scenes of the operation theatre, 



108 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

or the dissecting room, but after a while 
grows shockingly indifferent to every exhibi- 
tion of horror, so the heart, at first sympa- 
thetic with every pain, becomes at length 
torpid, not to be touched by the saddest ex- 
hibition of human ill. The wise physician 
knows how injurious such a result is, not only 
upon his personal and moral temper, but even 
upon his professional prospects. Hence the 
offensive manner of some doctors, so unnat- 
ural in their tenderness, so mechanical in the 
commonest courtesies of life. Better the 
rude eccentricities of the would-be Abernethy, 
than these polished heart-falsehoods of the 
fashionable apothecary. 

Against all these influences a deeply re- 
ligious spirit is the best defence. Christianity 
is always the truest courtesy. He who ever 
lives in sympathetic communion with the spir- 
it of Jesus Christ, will have a constant supply 
of real emotion — not due to external impulses, 
but depending upon the deep principles of an 
inner life. Humanity will take upon itself a 
new and beautiful form. The meanest, the 



THE ART OF HEALING. 109 

most pitiable object of the physician's care 
will have a sacred worth about it, as being 
part of the family of mankind, of which God 
is the Father, and Christ the Elder Bro- 
ther. The healing- art will be no longer a 
profession, but a calling, and the voice of 
God will ever be heard, giving dignity to all 
effort, and summoning to noblest endeavor. 

This will impart a glow to the emotions, 
and preserve the nature from the chill of 
mere intellectualism. The fundamental dual- 
ity of man in his material and his spiritual na- 
ture will not be forgotten. He who has 
found God the Great Spirit, is not likely to 
regard God's human child as a mere machine. 
The moral aspects of health and disease will 
be properly adjusted, and never ignored. 
Religion will render the man sympathetic, 
but real. It will give the genuine coin of po- 
liteness and good behavior, of which fashion, 
professional etiquette, worldly wisdom issue 
only the counterfeit. That purity of life of 
which we spoke, and the tenderness of heart 
of which we are speaking, when derived 



110 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

from true religion, will emerge in a gentleness 
of demeanor and a sweetness of manner that 
shall themselves be as medicine of wondrous 
potency. Many a man has been cured of his 
disease, who yet almost died of his physician. 
The roughness of manner which was natural 
to some great healers, and became a sort of 
fashion among their would-be imitators, 
would be needless when skill and insight, ex- 
perience and devotion rested upon the firm 
basis of religious conviction. And not a little 
of highest spiritual service could be wrought 
by him who, summoned to relieve man's suf- 
ferings in an hour of need, was able to seize 
upon the opportunities, then so often afford- 
ed, of a ministration, the issues of which are 
not merely in the health of the body and the 
enjoyment of this world, but in the vigor of 
the soul and the glorious felicities of the eter- 
nal life. 

There is one consideration of great practi- 
cal importance with which I close. It is, per- 
haps, not the best method to find the sanc- 
tions of the religion of Jesus Christ in the 



THE ART OF HEALING. Ill 

hopes or fears of a future world. The direct 
and spiritual claims of Christianity seem to be 
at once more elevated and more forcible than 
mere considerations of self-interest, even 
though they relate to the stupendous realities 
of eternity. Nevertheless, no sane man 
would dream of neglecting these; and the 
powers of the world to come, at times, im- 
press and overwhelm us with their awfulness. 
These thoughts may well affect a class of 
men who are placed in positions of constant 
peril. It is a well-known fact that the statis- 
tics of life and death among doctors bear out 
what common sense would suggest — that 
they are open to the insidious approach of 
diseases that are mortal, and that the ardu- 
ous duties of the profession make their life to 
be somewhat hazardous. 

As I review my contemporaries among med- 
ical men in college, at the university, and in 
professional life, how many of them have 
been cut down in the flower of their manhood 
just as life was opening up before them ! A 
slight accident at an operation or at a ' post- 



112 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

mortem/ a sudden call to an infectious disease, 
in some unguarded condition of the body, too 
great strain of professional labor, the pestilen- 
tial atmosphere in which a frail constitution 
was summoned to toil — these and other such 
circumstances in cases which, I dare say, 
many of you can now recall, all remind us of 
life's uncertainty and the peculiar dangers in 
which you are placed. " If a man die shall 
he live again ? " was the question which the 
Aramaean patriarch asked with solemn signif- 
icance thirty-five centuries ago. The ques- 
tion has lost none of its import for you to- 
day, though it may be answered in a fuller 
light. If there be a life beyond the grave — 
and who amongst you will dare to say in his 
best and wisest hours there is not ? — it is a 
strange journey upon which the soul must go. 
A visit to a patient, to-morrow, may start you 
upon it. Whither will it lead ? What is the 
road that you must travel ? Have you made 
preparation ? Is there a map of the country 
through which you pass ? Have you a guide, 
a companion? Will there be a hostelry, or 



THE ART OF HEALING. 1 13 

perchance a home ? Some of us think, and 
indeed, there are profound experiences of the 
inner soul whereby we say we know, that we 
have found those things which make all the 
prospect assured, the future without careful- 
ness, because in the present we have the ear- 
nest, the pledge for all that now may be un- 
known. It was a Physician who gave us the 
cheering knowledge. He is the Healer of all 
human woes, Healer of yours if you but seek 
His skill, and trust Him utterly ; and having 
made whole, then He teaches, guides, and 
saves. 



RELIGION AND ART. 



Exodus XXXV., 30-35. — And Moses said unto the 
children of Israel, See, the Lord hath called by 
name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of 
the tribe of Judah : and he hath filled him with 
the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, 
and in knowledge, and in all manner of work- 
manship ; and to devise curious works, to work 
in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the 
cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of 
wood, to make any manner of cunning work. 
And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, 
both he and Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of 
the tribe of Dan. Them hath he filled with 
wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of 
the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and 
of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in 
scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even 
of them that do any work, and of those that de- 
vise cunning work. 



RELIGION AND ART. 

The subject which demands our attention 
this morning, is perhaps of more general in- 
terest than any of those which have entered 
into our present course. In a certain sense 
it is not so technical, or at least there is a 
wider and more popular interest taken in the 
subject, and accordingly no man feels that he 
is quite a layman in relation to questions of 
art. Few persons will abstain from express- 
ing an opinion upon the artist's labor. 
Everyone can hear a piece of music, every- 
one can see a statue or a painting. The 
work of the architect is manifest, public. The 
passer by, though a fool, conceives himself 
able to judge whether a building be propor- 
tionate or monstrous, vast or mean, beautiful 
or shapeless — and perhaps this popular opin- 
ion has some truth in it, for while other stud- 



Il8 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

ies are more or less technical or professional, 
this is human, world-wide, universal. 

At the present time, too, there is what we 
may call a " rage for art." It has become a 
fashion. The development of wealth, and 
the extension of knowledge, together with the 
application of the results of scientific discov- 
eries to some of the arts, have combined to 
scatter widely the creations of the artist's ge- 
nius. Music is made popular, and even 
sculpture, the rarest of the arts, by the in- 
creased power of working in plastic methods, 
has been placed, in some of its forms, within 
the reach of persons of the narrowest means. 
Hence, a demand for objects of art has sprung 
up, and the supply of art-workers has accom- 
panied and responded to the demand. Proba- 
bly at no period in the world's history were 
there so many artists. Studios, academies, 
institutes, schools, rise on every hand. To- 
day it is not the patrician who patronizes art, 
but the people ; and the sense of art, the un- 
derstanding of art, is supposed at least to be 
as widespread as the market. 



RELIGION AND ART. 119 

In some quarters, especially where wealth 
has much accumulated, this taste for the pro- 
duction of art is a kind of fashion. It is taken 
up like any other fashion. Some make it a 
pursuit, a hobby, but the majority are drawn 
into it only as the straws in the river, because 
they always go with the stream. 

From this cause, we find ourselves in a 
whirlpool, we might almost say a chaos of ar- 
tistic opinions. A thousand schools contend 
for mastery, and with a sublime catholicity, 
the thousand schools are admitted by the art- 
devotee ; each one is accepted, each one is 
petted ; pieces, illustrative of each, are careful- 
ly bought and highly prized, until our homes 
come to be almost like museums, or still more 
like those strange collections of curiosity 
shops, whither gravitate all objects of human 
interest, and where they are heaped, without 
plan or method, or arrangement — grotesque, 
unutterable, ludicrous. 

In some cases, individual artists are able to 
make themselves of such note as to dominate 
the rage for a little, and even to stand out, 



120 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

prominent and observed. They may create a 
school of art, and for a short while impress 
their manner upon the social fashion, but gen- 
erally the democratic tendency of the times is 
too strong, even for the greatest genius, and 
he must drop into the crowd, or wait for that 
posterity, which will preserve his memory and 
name, and let the multitude go down into 
their proper and eternal oblivion. 

We have schools of criticism too. The ex- 
igencies of a reading public react upon the 
writers of the day, and the passing publica- 
tions of the hour must, of course, judge the 
performance of the artist and direct the taste 
of the people. Here and there a skilful au- 
thor makes himself heard. If an honest and 
strong man, he may indeed add to the stock 
of human knowledge in the sphere of criti- 
cism, but for the most part the roar and bab- 
blement of the day are too noisy, and men 
are too hurried to care for study. They 
want something bright and short, and appo- 
site ; and so the patchwork of our instruction 
keeps continually growing. Principles are 



RELIGION AND ART. 121 

ignored. The great laws of philosophy are 
known only by the few. Profound investiga- 
tion is at a discount, and the chaos of art-pro- 
ductions is only equalled by the formless void 
of criticisms upon them. 

To this must be added the whims and fan- 
cies of the buyers and patrons of art. Power 
to purchase does not by any means imply 
power to judge. The necessities of uphols- 
tery will sometimes determine the forma- 
tion of a gallery. Some men judge pictures 
by the prices which they have realized, and 
it needs a rare moral heroism for an artist, 
or even for a whole race of artists, to stand 
up against the influence of the picture-dealer 
and the picture-buyer. Thus the lower 
becomes the lord of the higher, arid a slav- 
ery is introduced as degrading as that which 
belonged to the old days of the Roman 
Empire, when oftentimes the scholars, the 
teachers, and the artists of the age, were be- 
neath the yoke of servitude in some patrician 
family. 

In such a condition of things it may well 



122 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

seem hopeless to discover any relation be- 
tween religion and art. I suppose, the men- 
tion of such relation will suggest to many 
what seems in our time the only link which 
connects these two spheres of human activity 
— namely, the use of art for the purposes of 
decorating the outer aspects of religious ser- 
vices. Of course, it will be said, art comes in 
very properly to aid religion, when we build 
fine churches or cathedrals ; when we set up 
our painted windows, through which the sun- 
light streams, charged by the tints of saints 
and confessors, and angels with the dim re- 
ligious light that fitly belongs to the solemn 
scenes of human devotion. Let the sculptor 
hew out our altars, or carve into the stony 
foliage the chapiters of columns, the bosses 
of the leaping arch. Summon the painter to 
place upon the walls the records of the an- 
cient days of faith, or even the lineaments of 
Him whom we adore, or the " mother of God " 
and " Queen of Heaven." Have we not 
priests who minister ? Clothe them, then, in 
beautiful garments, and give to the very rai- 



RELIGION AND ART. 1 23 

ment of the minister the significance of the 
office he discharges. And though this may 
belong rather to some sections of the church, 
who is there that will object to the services 
of the musician, that with the strains of beauty 
we may worship, or better still, hear other 
people worship God? 

Let the pealing organ blow 

To the full-voic'd quire below, 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As they, with sweetness thro' mine car, 

Dissolve me into ecstacics 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes. 

Yes ! these are the services which art may 
render to religion. But let me at the outset 
declare that this is not the relation which I 
propose to consider. I am not altogether 
assured that such service to religion rendered 
by art has been well for either art or religion. 
I know how much religion in all ages has 
inspired art, but it is doubtful, whether that 
inspiration has not served to cramp and to 
narrow the energies of the artist, while the 
purity of religion has been sullied, and often, 



124 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

its spirituality lost, by the ministration of art 
*to the services and forms of the church. Far 
other than this, far deeper, is that relation 
which I propose to discuss. And at the risk 
of appearing very tedious, I must ask you to 
accompany me in that analysis by which I 
think we shall find that the ultimate resolution 
of art brings us to religion, and upon which 
unity of ultimate cause I base my appeal to 
the artist on behalf of religion ; and even 
more than this, I shall claim from him in his 
fidelity to his own sphere, that service which 
is only truly rendered when it is rendered 
to God alone. 

When man begins to find himself in rela- 
tion to the outer world, and endeavors to in- 
terrogate his own consciousness as to the 
effect produced upon him by the influence of 
those external circumstances, he first recog- 
nizes sensations, each having its own peculiar 
quality, and generally associated with another 
feeling, that of pleasure or of pain ; in the 
one case tending to make him cease from 
that mode of sensation, in the other tending 



RELIGION AND ART. 12 5 

to make him" continue or repeat it. Upon 
these sensations the human understanding 
operates. We remember, we compare, we 
abstract, we combine, and in process of time 
there is stored within the mind a number of 
ideas, judgments, convictions, together with 
certain habitudes and facilities which may be 
set in action by the operation of outward 
things, and even by the volition of the man 
himself. At length, in the experience of 
these conditions of consciousness, we come 
upon certain states to which we give peculiar 
titles. They are generally complex and may 
be produced by a variety of different external 
conditions. 

For example, we look out upon the sea. It 
is a clear, sunshiny day. A gentle breeze is 
blowing towards the land ; waves, not high nor 
tempestuous, break upon the shingly beach. 
As they roll in, they curl over and change 
into lines of crested foam, and then run up the 
shore like coursers with their white manes 
flying in the wind, while the rattle of the peb- 
bles where they break, falls upon the ear like 



126 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

the sound of far-off voices. A few clouds lie 
idly in the sky, and cast their broad shadows 
to deepen the sapphire hue of ocean. Sea- 
birds wheel their flight, and ever and anon 
sweep downward and touch the waters, 
and gleam, for an instant, as they turn their 
wings towards us in the sun. A few sails 
dot the horizon here and there, while close 
beneath us sails by a lordly ship, with all her 
canvas spread, speeding to the haven which 
is concealed by yonder jutting point of land. 
We gaze upon the scene. Color, and form, 
and motion, and sound, all arrest us. We dis- 
tinguish, we compare, we discern, we remem- 
ber, we judge. But now through all this, 
there steals upon our mind a sentiment en- 
tirely its own — peculiar, imperial, delightful, 
and we say, It is beautiful. 

Or perhaps, we look out upon a crowd of 
human beings. They are gathered for business 
or pleasure, peace or war. Some we recog- 
nize, but the majority are strangers. We see 
them aged, young, rich, poor, men, women. 
Suddenly, our eyes fall upon one face, and we 



RELIGION AND ART. 127 

are riveted as by a spell. The sweep of the 
lines is so clear and free ; the brow is white 
and polished as marble, the eyes full, lus- 
trous, deep with hidden meaning, and flash- 
ing with pleasurable emotion. The colors of 
the skin are soft and delicate, with a bloom 
like that of the peach. Now, the whole lights 
up with a smile that reveals the brilliancy of 
the teeth, anon, the brows knit and the face 
grows dark like the sky before a storm. 
Separating from the crowd, we see the per- 
son walk, lightly, firm. The figure, com- 
pact and agile, moves with ease and har- 
mony. Strength seems to be gathered into 
restfulness, yet in the repose of its well-bal- 
anced form the eye finds satisfaction and 
delight. For a moment, perhaps, we are 
drawn away from the special business of that 
scene, and we say, How beautiful ! 

It is not needful to cite. any other ex- 
amples. A score will recur to you — the 
tree full of foliage, the garden of flowers, the 
sunrise on the mountains, the spreading 
landscape, the snow covered plain. These 



128 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

and many other conditions of the outer world 
will give to us that sense of the beautiful, and 
if it be connected with what is infinite, and out 
of proportion to our powers, or even to our 
imagination, then we give to it another term, 
the sublime. This is related to the beautiful, 
and differs only in that which we have indi- 
cated, the difference of proportion which the 
object bears to the human mind. 

Now it is hardly needful to show that this 
sense of the beautiful or the sublime is not 
the same as the conviction of truth which be- 
longs to the judgment of the understanding. 
To say a thing is true is not the same as to 
say that it is beautiful. To be sure, the beau- 
tiful and the true will always be found to be 
concurrent and in harmony; but things may 
be true Avhich are not beautiful, whether the 
converse can be affirmed or not. Similarly, 
the beautiful is not the good. That approba- 
tion, that judgment of the moral sense which 
we affirm when we say that a thing is right, 
does not imply, does not necessarily involve 
its beauty. Indeed the judgment of the good 



RELIGION AND ART. 1 29 

may be affirmed where there is no sentiment 
of the beautiful, however the truly beautiful 
may always belong to the sphere of the good. 
These are different sentiments of our nature, 
and nothing is gained by confounding what 
are essentially diverse. Some have said that 
the useful is the beautiful. An appeal to ex- 
perience is only needed to convince the can- 
did mind that though it is quite possible to 
associate use and beauty, still in many cases 
an object may be useful enough while its 
beauty is far to seek. I need hardly assert 
the distinction between the beautiful and the 
agreeable. The latter is a condition of sen- 
sation, and only differs in different persons. 
There is no law of the agreeable. " Tastes 
cannot be disputed," is not only a proverb 
of human experience, it is a principle of 
correct psychology. But the beautiful is de- 
terminable. It has its law definite, fixed. 
You may say you do not find such a thing 
agreeable, and you speak out the truth of 
your own sensation ; but to say that you find 
something to be not beautiful, only proves 



130 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

your ignorance and lack of cultivation. Beau- 
ty is an absolute judgment. It is really as 
independent of us as is the true or the good. 
It can be resolved by no appeal to the 
senses ; it is given us only by the affirma- 
tions, the perceptions of the higher reason. 
Whilst thus, there is the perception of the 
beautiful by the reason, there is also a delight, 
a sentiment of joy, which this perception oc- 
casions. It is pleasure or admiration. It is 
the beginning of love. It is one of the pure, 
serene delights of the soul. It is not desire. 
It springs from no sense of need, no longing 
to possess. It is a pure enjoyment. As says 
the great French philosopher, " Admiration 
is in its nature respectful, whilst desire tends 
to profane its object.'' In the presence of 
beauty this sentiment knows no longing. In 
the contemplation of the sublime it experi- 
ences no fear. Such is a very brief analysis 
of the sentiment of the beautiful and sublime 
■ — the sentiment special, and the idea simple. 
We need not pursue the analysis any fur- 
ther ; though there is one point which is of 



RELIGION AND ART. 131 

importance that we reserve, however, for a 
later consideration. 

Let us return to our consideration of human 
consciousness and endeavor to discover what 
is the next step in the mind of him who has 
been impressed with this sense of the beauti- 
ful and the sublime. Remember man is not 
simply passive. He is more than a mere 
recipient of impressions. There is within 
him a spring of action. He has powers, 
faculties, and these require, nay, these sug- 
gest and compel endeavor on his part. 
There is, then, a prompting towards imitation. 
Man sees an action — he will try to perform 
it. He hears a sound — he will endeavor to 
imitate it. He beholds a scene — he tries to 
recall it, not merely in the pages of his 
memory and within the halls of the repre- 
sentative faculties of his mind, but he seeks 
to make the thing itself, or at least such 
figures of it as shall suffice to call up again 
in the mind of the observer, sentiments simi- 
lar to those which he experienced when he 
first looked upon it in the external world. 



13-3 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Man is thus imitative. He must be himself a 
maker, a creator ; and as he speaks, or draws 
figures, or lays out land, or moulds forms, 
or heaps together masses, or blends colors — 
what he has seen or heard, he wishes to see 
and hear again, content, however, if the forms 
of his own fashioning shall suggest the ideas 
and compel the sentiments which the natural 
objects had produced. 

But here it must be observed that man does 
not merely imitate. He has no power to 
create again the forms and scenes which nature 
presented. The landscape, for example, was 
beautiful, sublime, but man cannot make a 
landscape. He cannot lift a mountain, de- 
press a valley, cut out a river, pour out a 
lake, or bid an ocean flow and ebb. Nay, 
not even the smallest thing in nature can man 
absolutely reproduce. A single flower, a sim- 
ple leaf, a tiny insect, are all beyond the reach 
of human faculties, and for that matter, man 
cares not to produce them. Even if he could 
make a leaf, what would be the use of it ? 
what the pleasure of it ? It is only one amid the 



RELIGION AND ART. 1 33 

million leaves that nature forms each spring- 
time, probably, at best, not one of the most 
beautiful, the most perfect. What, if man 
could even reproduce himself, bringing to- 
gether all the bones, and tissues, the muscles, 
nerves and tendons, covering the frame with 
blooming skin and vitalizing all with the 
breath of life — what after all has he accom- 
plished, but to make another man? , This 
were not art, but only nature unnatural — God's 
place and work, occupied and interfered with 
by one who at best could only use the merest 
'prentice hand at making. It is quite clear 
that man does not aim at imitation. The 
faculty which the beautiful wakens is some- 
thing other than that which desires to repeat 
the processes and obtain the results of na- 
ture's workings. 

It is the presence of that other element, of 
which we spoke above, which really gives the 
differentiating character to the mimetic ten- 
dency and direction of human endeavor, and 
here let us for a moment seek to discover it. 

We gaze upon a beautiful scene of nature, 



134 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

a beautiful object of art, a beautiful face or 
figure. What is this beauty which we dis- 
cover ? What is the real object of that senti- 
ment which we experience ? Let us resolve 
all the forms and colors which are thus blend- 
ed, all the sights and sounds which combine to 
make up this circumstance of beauty, and will 
any of these, or all of them, viewed merely as 
sensible objects, supply us with that element 
which we seek ? Surely not. Does it not 
seem to vanish as we approach it ? Does it not 
elude our grasp even at the moment when we 
extend our hand to hold it ? In the physical 
world we have physical beauty, in the intellect- 
ual world we have intellectual beauty, in the 
moral world moral beauty, and yet the beauty 
is not the sensible, nor the intellectual, nor the 
moral. If then beauty is not given by these 
things in themselves, must we not conclude 
that the relation which the onlooker bears to 
that which he observes must, in some way, 
supply the element which we seek. In a 
word, must there not be the percipient mind 
before there can be beauty, and is it not some- 






RELIGION AND ART. 135 

thing suggested to the mind over and above 
the mere congeries of external objects, which 
is the final element of the beautiful that the 
mind perceives ? Is it only the landscape ? is 
it only the fair face and graceful figure ? is it 
only the glistening sea, and the shining sky? 
or does there not break through these forms 
and aspects of external things something that 
is not sensible, not intellectual, not merely 
moral ? Is there not indeed, suggested, some- 
thing nobler than the landscape, something 
purer than the face of perfect beauty, some- 
thing higher even than the action of noblest 
virtue ? In a word, does not the beautiful con- 
tain or at least involve the ideal ? The scene 
of nature invests a presence, the face of man 
bespeaks a soul, the deed of goodness sug- 
gests a God. None of these things fully con- 
tent us. Their very beauty suggests to us 
something towards which they rise even 
though they do not attain unto it, and at the 
very moment when the real seems to be 
touching the ideal, then the latter escapes and 
is lost to us above the upper air. 



136 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Now I. think you will see the necessity and 
the law of art. In the first place, man en- 
deavors to gain this ideal, himself to enform 
it. He loves it, and though it is suggested 
to him in nature around him, he would fain 
himself create that which should express this 
ideal. He imitates nature, and it must be 
by form or color, by sound or sight, that he 
must effect this. To imitate nature exactly, 
with copy and counterpart that should only 
be the repetition of nature, would be certainly 
to fail of the realization of the ideal ; for na- 
ture herself has failed before him, and how 
can he expect to succeed where the great 
artist has not attained ? He frees himself 
from nature, wherever she has added to her 
works what is not needed for the ideal, and 
then giving freedom to imagination, he en- 
deavors to express in such methods as he 
chooses from amongst nature's own workings, 
that ideal with which nature's own finished 
scenes at first supplied him. 

And this becomes, as we have said, the 
law of the activity of the artist. He endeav- 



RELIGION AND ART. 137 

ors to express the ideal by such imitations of 
nature as are sufficient to suggest the beauti- 
ful. To try to do more than this is to fly 
Icarus-like too near the sun, and to fall dis- 
honored and destroyed in some deep sea. 
To do less than this is to be a mere artificer, 
a workman, a laborer, perhaps an artiste, but 
not an artist. These, sublimest of all human 
kind, know only perpetual endeavor, perpet- 
ual failure. Their triumph, their perfect real- 
ization, is only when they, as all, shall gaze 
upon the face of God, and for this, none can be 
made fit, except by passing from this nature 
through the low portal of all-revealing death. 

We are now prepared for a definition of 
art, and with that, our analysis of the objects 
of art, for the present, will be sufficient. Art 
is that free energy of man, whereby he seeks 
to express his sense of the ideal, and to pro- 
duce in others the sentiment of the beautiful 
and the sublime. 

This is our natural passage to the showing 
of that relation between religion and art, 
which we are now, I think, able to perceive. 



I38 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

For what is this ideal ? Surely it is not dif- 
ficult to see that nothing less than God, can 
be the ideal of beauty. For the ideal must 
be the highest ; we cannot permit any rest for 
the mind that is seeking in the beautiful the 
ever more beautiful, and the highest must be 
God. The ideal also must be infinite, for in 
all conceptions of the sublime, anything that 
is finite, even the greatest conceivable, is still 
in relation to our faculties, and is therefore no 
longer the sublime. The infinite, then, can 
only be God. The ideal, moreover, must be 
unity, for a comparison of ideals must issue 
in the preference of one to the other — equals 
being impossible by the very terms of the 
problem, and the only One is God. The ideal, 
too, must finally be perfect, for the imperfect 
is realizable, and as such becomes only the 
object which suggests the ideal, and is not 
the ideal itself — and the perfect assuredly is 
God. God is then the ideal beautiful. 
Towards Him all forms of grace and beauty 
point. They are naught but the garments 
which he wears, naught but the beam of His 



RELIGION AND ART. 1 39 

celestial light. The beauty of intellectual 
objects is only the suggested truth of God's 
own nature. They speak His words, they 
reveal His mind. And what is goodness but 
the showing of His eternal purity and per- 
fectness ? He is strong in all strong things, 
virtuous in all the virtues, gracious in the 
graces, holy in the holiness of each. 

Thou art, O God, the life and light 

Of all this wondrous world we see, 
Its glow by day, its smile by night, 

Are but reflections caught from Thee ; 
Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, 
And all things fair and bright are Thine. 

When day with farewell beam delays 

Among the opening clouds of even, 
And we can almost think we gaze 

Through golden vistas into heaven, 
Those hues that make the sun's decline 
So soft, so radiant, Lord, are Thine. 

When night with wings of starry gloom 

O'ershadows all the earth and skies, 
Like some dark beauteous bird, whose plume 

Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes, 
That sacred gloom, those fires divine, 
So grand, so countless, Lord, are Thine. 



140 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

When youthful spring around us breathes, 

Thy spirit warms her fragrant sigh, 
And every flower the summer wreathes, 

Is born beneath that kindling eye ; 
Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, 
And all things fair and bright are Thine. 

—Thomas Moore, 1816. 

It will be hardly needful for me to illustrate 
my argument by some example, but those of 
you who are familiar with the noblest achieve- 
ments of the ancient artists (who continue for 
ever the teachers of art to the whole world) 
can easily read between my lines the interpre- 
tations of some of their great works which 
have remained to us until this time. 

I once took a child through the gallery and 
hall devoted to ancient sculpture in the British 
Museum. When I asked her, at the close of 
our visit, what she thought of the various 
statues she had seen, she replied : " They 
seemed to be all on tip-toe — as if they were 
reaching up to something." There could not 
be in child-language a better description of 
the true significance of the highest art. It is 
the endeavor to express that ideal after which 



RELIGION AND ART. 141 

the mind ever seeks, even though in the at- 
tempt our highest effort is frustrated and falls 
short of what we would accomplish. An art 
that absolutely succeeds is impossible. An 
art that is content is self-condemned. 

I shall never forget the effect which was 
produced upon my mind when I first saw the 
Apollo Belvedere. Is it indeed the Apollo ? 
the Sun-God, the swift divinity of splendor, 
beauty, life ? Seek to catch the prevailing 
tone of that countenance, and it will elude 
you. Is it scorn or anger? Is it a noble in- 
dignation touched by some soft lines that I 
fain would distinguish. But all the char- 
acters of face, and head, and limb, and body 
only breathe that uplifting, that soaring spirit 
which the highest art must ever express. 
When the Ephesian had finished his work, 
did he weep, I wonder, or did he worship ? 
Tears for the power that failed to express all 
the divine — adoration for the divine that is in 
the ideal of the work ? The sphere of art is 
a lower heaven, midway between the earth in 
which we dwell and the highest glory wherein 



142 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

hidden, even by the light unapproachable, is 
the everlasting God. 

It may be, perhaps, well to enforce my 
views by the authority of one of the greatest 
art-critics. Winckelmann says : 

" Among all the works of antiquity that have es- 
caped destruction the statue of Apollo is the highest 
ideal of art. The artist has constructed this work 
entirely on the ideal, and has employed in its struc- 
ture just so much only of the material as was neces- 
sary to carry out his design and render it visible. 
This Apollo excels all other figures of him as much 
as the Apollo of Homer excels him whom later poets 
paint. His stature is loftier than that of man, and 
his attitude speaks of the greatness with which he is 
filled. An eternal spring, as in the happy fields of 
Elysium, clothes with the charm of youth the grace- 
ful manliness of ripened years, and plays with soft- 
ness and tenderness about the proud shape of his 
limbs. Let thy spirit penetrate into the kingdom of 
corporeal beauties, and strive to become a creator of a 
heavenly nature, in order that thy mind may be filled 
with beauties that are elevated above nature, for there 
is nothing mortal here which human necessities re- 
quire. Neither bloodvessels nor sinews heat and stir 
the body, but a heavenly essence, diffusing itself like 



RELIGION AND ART. 143 

a gentle stream, seems to fill the whole contour of the 
figure. He has pursued the Python against which 
he uses his bow for the first time ; with vigorous step 
he has overtaken the monster and slain it. His lofty- 
look, filled with a consciousness of power, seems to 
rise far above his victory and to gaze into infinity. 
Scorn sits upon his lips, and his nostrils are swelling 
with suppressed anger which mounts even to the 
proud forehead ; but the peace which floats upon it 
in blissful calm remains undisturbed, and his eye is 
full of sweetness, as when the Muses gathered round 
him seeking to embrace him. The father of the gods, 
in all the images of him which we have remaining 
and which art venerates, does not approach so nearly 
the grandeur in which he manifested himself to the 
understanding of the divine poet as he does here in 
the countenance of his son, and the individual beau- 
ties of the other deities are here as in the person of 
Pandora assembled together ; a forehead of Jupiter, 
pregnant with the goddess of wisdom, and eyebrows 
the contractions of which express their will, the 
grandly arched eyes of the queen of the gods, and a 
mouth shaped like that whose touch stirred with de- 
light the loved Branchus. The soft hair plays about 
the divine head as if agitated by a gentle breeze, like 
the slender waving tendrils of the noble vine ; it 
seems to be anointed with the oil of the gods, and 
tied by the Graces with pleasing display on the crown 



144 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

of his head. In the presence of this miracle of art I 
forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position, for 
the purpose of looking upon it in a worthy manner. 
My breast seems to enlarge and swell with reverence, 
like the breasts of those who were filled with the 
spirit of prophecy, and I feel myself transported to 
Delos and into the iEgean groves, places which 
Apollo honored by his presence, for my image seems 
to receive life and motion like the beautiful creation 
of Pygmalion. How is it possible to paint and de- 
scribe it ! Art itself must counsel me, and guide my 
hand in filling up hereafter the first outlines which I 
have here sketched. As they who were unable to 
reach the heads of the divinities which they wished 
to crown deposited the garlands at the feet of them, 
so I place at the feet of this image the conception 
which I have presented of it." * 

What then are the practical results which 
we adduce from the analysis ? In the first 
place, it is clear that religion and art can never 
be opposed!' There is something of a tendency 
in our time to suppose that art must be freed 

* Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art, Lodge's translation, 
Book XL, Chap. III., Sect. II. See this passage, also quoted in 
Cousin's Lectures on " The True, The Beautiful, The Good," to 
which very suggestive work I acknowledge great indebtedness, and 
to the careful study of which I would direct the student. 



RELIGION AND ART. 145 

from the shackles of religion, even from the re- 
straints of morality. Nay, in some quarters this 
is pushed into the extreme of making art almost 
a protest against good morals and religion. 
The painter, the poet, must be pagan, in that 
sense of pagan which is actually atheistic. 
.They must only express what is sensual, 
insphering the simply material in the glory 
and life of music and color. Against this, his- 
tory is so directly counter, that I need hardly 
appeal to the principles of. philosophy, but 
I am bold to affirm that never was there a 
theory which, if adopted by the artist, would 
prove more poisonous and deadly than this. 
Art would soon become only the minion of 
human grossness and shame. Genius would 
sink into the mire of sensuality, and the dis- 
honor of the artist would be complete, when 
his greatest triumphs should be reserved for 
the decorations, suitable only to the debauches 
of harlotry, and the strains of heavenly music 
should be discorded down to the incoherent 
utterances of the orgies of a beast. 

But art and religion are never opposed. 



14-6 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

The ends of each are one. The ideal of the 
former is sought by genius, and is found only 
in God. Worship is the expression of the 
faith of the latter, and that too seeks for 
the Eternal One. The ancient masters were 
almost priests. Not without significance 
were they inspired for their mightiest en- 
deavors by the solemn acts of an earnest 
devotion. The spirit which has sought and 
found its God in prayer, should not any the 
less worthily yearn for the ideal of beauty 
which nature suggests and art endeavors to 
unfold. To believe in God, to seek Him, will 
at least, forever conserve the soul in the re- 
cognition that there is an ideal, and he who 
once forgets that, or ceases to aim at it, must 
take off his artist dress and fall back among 
the common herd. Schiller sang truly that 
for the poet, Jove's invitation was ever given : 

" Poet, wilt thou with me dwell in my heaven ? 
Oft as thou comest, open it shall be." 

Silence may well fall upon the singer if 
once he holds that there is no heaven, and 



RELIGION AND ART. 147 

that there is no God by whose side he may 
proudly sit, his dearest earthly son. 

I shall not here enter into the vexed ques- 
tion whether the artist must obey any laws but 
those that govern his art. I will simply affirm 
my conviction, that true art is self-sufficient, 
and to aim at anything else than what art de- 
mands, will be to cripple and harass the artist 
and spoil his work. But, while it is true that 
the artist must not be a moralist, it is also true 
that he must not be immoral. This is the 
same error, only committed against morality 
instead of for it — an error which, were it not 
so fatal in its results, would be amusing as ex- 
emplified by the licentious poets and painters 
of this age. It is enough surely for me, to 
warn the careful student against both mis- 
takes. They illustrate the old proverb of the 
meeting of extremes, in a most noteworthy 
way. 

And then, finally, it naturally arises from all 
that has been said, that the religious habit of 
life must be of important practical avail to the 
worker in art. Success depends much on 



148 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

temper — that condition of character which is 
found in moral equipoise and self-control. 
Beauty is a delicate and evanescent thing. It 
withdraws from the coarse and the contentious, 
the unlovely and the violent. Very much, as 
we have seen, is brought by the eye which 
contemplates, the mind which observes. And 
what shall so purge the nature of the motes 
and beams wherewith no man can clearly see, 
as a faith in God and a humble worship of the 
divine King? This gives tenderness and 
zeal, and the artist must be tender and his 
nature must be aflame with a pure ardor. 
Art is a vain pursuit if there be not honesty 
and singleness of purpose, and he who knows 
God and serves Him can alone be simple, 
true, and virtuous. Art must be free, and the 
freeman is none other than he, whom the truth 
has made free. Over such a soul, low ends, 
imperfect endeavors, the gross passions, which 
physical beauties unidealized easily summon, 
will have no control. On his canvases nat- 
ure herself will pour her inspiration ; in his 
sculpture, the divine life itself will breathe ; 






RELIGION AND ART. 149 

while the music that he sings will be the 
echoes — not faint and distant, but full and un- 
broken — of the celestial strains that forever 
resound about the throne of God. 

An artist once painted a picture of the last 
supper. He had bent all his power upon the 
central figure, and especially upon the head of 
the Christ. It was his habit to mingle with the 
crowd that surrounded his works in the ex- 
hibition, and listen to the remarks which fell 
from the lips of the observers. When the pic- 
ture was uncovered, and the people pressed 
to look, according to his custom, he placed 
himself among them, and listened. Many 
things were said, but at last he heard one 
man exclaim in wonder and admiration at the 
execution of the cup which was held in the 
hand of our Lord. It was indeed a marvel- 
lous piece of painting, but the artist went 
home disappointed, lamenting his failure, 
" for," said he, " I wanted no one to see any- 
thing but the face of the Christ." Ah my 
friends ! is there no profound lesson here 
for you, for us all ? That is the ideal of life 



ISO SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

and beauty. The old artists knew it, and 
they painted and adored. Let that be the 
supreme object of your devotion. As artists, 
you will find nothing nobler than the Christ ; 
as men, you will find nothing diviner than that 
Divine Man. In Him, your art has its noblest 
subject ; in Him, your life can find its only true 
end and glory. 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS 
THEOLOGY. 



I. Timothy I., 17. — "Now unto the King eternal, im- 
mortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor 
and glory for ever and ever, Amen. " 



VI. 

RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS 
THEOLOGY. 

Among the subjects which have occupied 
our attention in these sermons to students, 
there is not one that is so specific, and yet so 
general in its aspects, as that which we con- 
sider to-day. The theological student, almost 
in every case preparing for the profession of 
a Christian minister, is supposed to be the 
most professional among students, and is 
looking forward to entering a class which is 
most marked. Indeed, the clerical order 
alone, retains any distinguishing garb, and 
generally prosecutes its studies in seminaries 
set apart for its own special use. Other pro- 
fessions merge in the general run of mankind, 
but the ministry cannot divest itself of its 
notions of exclusiveness, cannot be free from 
the old ideas of caste. 
7* 



154 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Notwithstanding this, the marked character 
of the profession, the secluded method of 
their study, the subject which is emphatically 
theirs — namely, theology — is perhaps more 
widely treated, and enters more deeply into 
the thoughts and pursuits of all cultured per- 
sons, than any of its sisters. Theology is 
properly the science which is conversant with 
the nature and actions of God and His rela- 
tions to men, and these are the ultimate 
questions of all human thought. Every study 
runs up to this ; every thinker, speaker, 
writer, treats more or less distinctly of the 
being and the laws of God. All of you who 
hear me are students of theology. The sub- 
ject of our discourse, therefore, is of universal 
interest and importance. 

We have said that theology is a science. 
It is sometimes held, nowadays, that a science 
of theology is impossible. In former times, 
this branch of human knowledge was recog- 
nized as the very queen of all the sciences ; 
but now her claims are disputed, and by some 
she is even cast out of the sacred circle alto- 



RELTGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 55 

gether. Of course, if we limit the term 
science to mere objects of sense, if we deny 
altogether the possibility of the knowledge 
of spiritual things, if space and time are the 
only modes of existence, and matter and 
motion the only objects of human thought 
— then, indeed, theology may well cease to 
be a science, although, when it is thus abol- 
ished, its twin sisters, philosophy and meta- 
physics, must be in like manner destroyed. 
The discussion, however, of this topic does 
not fall within our province now. We need 
only remark that, necessarily, the power of 
verifying our results in theological investiga- 
tion is limited altogether to the sphere of ex- 
perience. We cannot experiment, and are 
precluded from adopting some of the methods 
of scientific procedure which are applicable in 
the physical sciences. However, we are able 
to test our theology by careful observation 
of that practical life which is the result of 
theological knowledge, or the theory of which 
is found by theological investigation. If the- 
ology is the knowledge of facts upon which 



156 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

religion depends, or if theology is the science 
of religion, then we have in the phenomena 
of religion the materials of theology, and in 
the same phenomena the tests of our theolo- 
gical correctness. 

What, then, is the relation of religion to 
theology? They are not to be confounded for 
a moment. A knowledge of theology is by 
no means a proof of religious character, and 
many men are religious who are quite desti- 
tute of any scientific theology. Theology 
and religion are related to each other as 
science and art, theory and practice, knowl- 
edge and life. Religion is character and 
conduct, inspiration, conviction, obedience to 
law, fulfilment of duty, worship, prayer, 
praise, a holy living, a triumphant dying. 
Theology sets forth those principles upon 
which such life depends. It arranges in order 
the truths which are seen in such conduct, 
and considers the laws which govern it. Al- 
though it must not be supposed that theology 
is the science of religion simply, yet it em- 
braces this as one of its important divisions. 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 157 

Theology deals with the nature of God, 
and His relation to man. As every science is 
dependent upon facts, theology has its facts, 
which to arrange, classify, and explain, are 
the functions of this noble pursuit. The 
sources of it are found in the objects around 
us — in nature, and the works of nature ; in 
consciousness, that world within, equal, even 
superior, to the wondrous world without. 
Theology finds also its material in the history 
of mankind, and finally and chiefly, in the 
revelation which God has made of Himself to 
the human family. As we have said, it is, in 
the very nature of the thing, unverifiable by 
experiment ; but its results may be tested by 
the illustrations of its truths, afforded in the 
practice of religion. The student of theology, 
indeed, every thoughtful man, will apply these 
tests to his thinkings upon the most moment- 
ous themes which can occupy human intelli- 
gence. To some of these I desire to direct 
your attention. They will be guides to our 
way, often rugged, steep, and in a shad- 
owy twilight. It will be well ever to ask 



158 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

ourselves, whether the theology which we 
profess and teach be religious or irreligious. 
Will it deepen conviction of duty towards 
God ? will it draw us nearer to the Eternal ? 
will it fill our hearts with a profounder con- 
sciousness of His presence, His strength, His 
grace ? Then, indeed, we may be sure that 
our knowledge is true knowledge, for it 
has its blossom, flower, and fruit in the holi- 
ness and perfection of a Divine life. 

Our limits of time will allow of a reference 
to only three tests of theological truth. 

In the first place, it will be an irreligious 
theology if it furnishes its with such an idea 
of God as will not lead to a service of Him 
that is universal. 

It is quite certain that if there be a God at 
all, and if He comes into any relationship to 
man, He must be a God who is the God of 
all men, who demands the service of all, who 
is willing to receive all, and acts in relation 
to all. No conception of humanity is possible 
which excludes any portion of the race from 
equal rights and equal duties in the sight of 






RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 59 

the Creator and Governor of all men. A 
God related to some, and not to all, is surely 
no God — no God who can demand allegiance, 
require obedience, and ask for worship. 
The polytheism of the ancient world is thus a 
theology which cannot be accepted for an 
instant. Its partiality, its circumscribed 
spheres of operation, its inhumanity, stamp it 
with untruthfulness, and the history of its 
development is the best proof of its falsehood. 
Its rites degenerate into orgies without the 
possibility of reformation, its corruptions at 
last issue in complete decay, and it vanishes 
before the truth as the shadow of night 
before the advancing sunshine. 

But monotheistic theology may be quite as 
irreligious as polytheism, and as little truth- 
ful (except in its declaration of the oneness of 
God), as the errors which it has supplanted, at 
least, in the civilized world. A theology 
which represents God in His relation to man 
as partial, as choosing some and rejecting 
others, giving ordinances which necessarily 
determine the eternal absence of some of His 



l6o SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

creatures from His grace and favor — in a 
word, which presents the natural relation of 
some to God as different from that of others, 
so that some can worship Hirn but others 
cannot, in any real sense of that term, — such 
a theology is irreligious, and certainly untrue. 
Here, perhaps, a cautionary word upon 
what is called anthropomorphism may be of 
use. Anthropomorphic views of the Divine 
nature are such as conceive of the attributes 
of God as being like those of men ; so that 
we speak of God's love, justice, and power, 
as we speak of the love, justice, and power 
which men may display. According to some, 
this is incorrect — indeed, verges upon idola- 
try — and leads us to think of God as nothing 
more that a magnified man. But it is clear 
that if we think of God at all, we must think 
of Him in relation to us, and in some sort 
anthropomorphic views of God are necessary. 
Indeed, they are also true, for on the moral 
side of our nature we are like God ; we are 
the sons of God and possess the Divine life. 
But while anthropomorphism is necessary 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. l6l 

and philosophic, it may be seriously abused. 
We must ever guard against supposing that 
any of our conceptions of the attributes of 
God are complete and adequate to His essen- 
tial nature. They are still only sides of the 
Divine Being viewed in their relation to us, 
and therefore, anything which partakes of 
the nature of what has been called a " conflict 
among the attributes," is alien, even horrible, 
to the thought of Him who is ever holy, 
blessed, calm, serene. We must be careful, 
therefore, not to set forth any view of God so 
that we shall come to unworthy views of 
other aspects of His being. In the Divine 
nature there is an absolute unity, whereby, in 
fact, the various attributes are one. We may 
conceive of Him as thus varied, with diverse 
powers, but the Eternal God is for ever one 
in nature, absolutely one in the harmony and 
unity of His being. 

From this it follows that God must ever act 
towards men with benevolence and justice. 
The Creator of the ends of the earth will do 
right, and His loving kindness will ever be 



l62 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

over all His works. Anything partial, any- 
thing which is like favoritism, the neglect of 
any, the furtherance of some, is irreligious, 
not to say immoral, and theology must be 
jealously guarded against the approach to 
such an error and confusion. 

It may be here objected that such a limita- 
tion of the revelation of God's will to man has 
marked the teaching of the Scripture. There 
we find that He spoke only to certain persons, 
and through them to a small and insignificant 
nation ; that His revelation was not made to 
all men, and that in the final manifestation of 
Himself through Jesus Christ to His Church 
it is still with limits, and, as a matter of fact, 
only a very small portion of mankind have 
been made to know the grace of God. This, 
indeed, is a form of objection which is some- 
times taken by the infidel against the whole 
scheme of revelation, which is said to be par- 
tial and limited, while it ought to be universal. 
But the error of both objectors is the con- 
clusion that revelation has been partial. 
In the first place, there is nothing which 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 63 

excludes any one from the grace of God. 
Even Judaism was able to receive, and did 
receive, persons from every nation within it- 
self, and to the enjoyment of its privileges ; 
while running side by side with the specific 
system of the Mosaic order, we find that God 
was operating upon people among the Gen- 
tiles, teaching, guiding, and blessing them. 
And who shall define the precise lines at 
which the Divine treatment of man, as man, 
begins and ends ? 

In Christianity we have a religion which 
claims the whole world, and is specially 
declared to rest upon the truth that " God 
so loved the world . . . that whosoever be- 
lieveth should not perish but have everlasting 
life." The mode by which God intends to in- 
clude all men within His grace we cannot dis- 
cuss. Moral forces work ever according to 
laws of development, and that a little one 
should become a thousand, and that a small 
stone hewed out of the rock should fill the 
earth — these are ways in which God has 
chosen to work, and yet we know that the 



164 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

religion itself which is thus made to pass 
through processes of growth is absolutely 
universal, and must extend to every man. It 
is an interesting subject of research to find 
out how far, even now, while Christianity 
seems to be only partial, the work and influ- 
ence of Jesus Christ are yet powerful among 
those who have not known Him by name, 
and do not at all recognize that, in and 
through Him, God is operating even upon 
them. Of this at least we may be sure: 
God's grace, the scientific knowledge of which 
is Scriptural theology, is as universal as man- 
kind, and leaves out no place, no time, no 
people, in the sweep of its effectiveness. 

2. The second test which we may apply 
to our theology is, that it will be irreligious 
if it is not in harmony with the other spheres 
of human thought and life in which we 
obtain knowledge of truth. Truth is dis- 
covered in other fields of activity than merely 
those of religion and theology. We find it 
in the Scriptures, but we gain it also from the 
works of God. It may be gathered from the 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 165 

development of religion amongst mankind, 
but it is also derived from a study of the 
social and political life of men. But of this 
we may be quite sure, that whencesoever 
truth may come, it will be always consistent, 
always in harmony with all other truth. 
Truth is everywhere Divine, and among 
things that are true, there can only be con- 
currence, correspondence, and the most per- 
fect blending of all the particulars into the 
one universal whole. 

Perhaps the chief sources of truth outside 
of revelation have been physical science and 
moral science. In both of these, men have 
learned something of the nature and attri- 
butes of God, and there discovered the neces- 
sary and eternal laws whereby He governs 
the world, and in accordance with which He 
ever acts towards men. 

Now, it is clear that a theology which con- 
tains principles contradictory to those which 
are certainly given in science or in morals 
cannot be true, and from it, therefore, no real 
religious life can flow. In this respect many 



l66 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

of those propositions which have been ac- 
cepted as true upon the supposed testimony 
of Scripture have been found, when further 
light has been gained upon the subject, to be 
errors needing the rectification which is found 
in the harmony of truth. Here, especially, we 
miorht note the teaching which at one time 
was accepted as of distinctly Divine authority 
concerning the creation of the world and the 
formation of men and animals. To have 
denied that the work of creation occupied 
only six of our days, or to have believed that 
death existed before the presence of man 
upon the earth, would have drawn down 
upon the devoted holder of such views the 
anathema of nearly the whole Church ; but to- 
day there is not an intelligent man amongst 
us to whom these points are anything but the 
merest commonplace. Geology has given a 
new aspect to all our knowledge of creation 
and the genesis of things, and we have been 
compelled to re-examine the theological dog- 
mas which have not squared with the result 
of modern research. The fact is, that men are 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 167 

beginning to recognize, that they have been 
often taking their own inferences for Scrip- 
ture, and holding these to be fundamental 
theological truths. Happy is that man 
whose mind is ever open to the light which 
God pours upon us from every side, and is 
still " proving all things," though "holding 
fast that which is good ! " 

This warning will apply to the mere literal- 
ist, as the former test which we have con- 
sidered, referred rather to the theologian of 
the schools. In a certain sense, we must be 
freed from the dominion of the Book, or 
rather from the sovereignty of certain forms 
of interpretation. Believing, as I do, that the 
Book is Divine, I have complete confidence 
that the Book will prove its consistency and 
harmony with everything else that is Divine. 
But we have not yet discovered the Divine 
interpreter of the Book, whose words must be 
final, whose authority none can impugn, ex- 
cept that ever indwelling grace and power of 
the Holy Ghost, whereby men may still grow 
and develop in the knowledge of the truth — 



l68 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

a grace vital and life-giving in the midst of 
all the stirring progress of our age. 

Some men and some churches have refused 
to allow their old theories to be changed in 
accord with the light of modern times. The 
result is that they have been left high and 
dry by the mighty, passing flood-tide of 
thought and life. They stand to-day without 
a moment's influence among their fellow-men. 
They repeat words which are empty, and 
reiterate beliefs which are distinctly contrary 
to the truth of God. 

3. In the discussion of these two tests of a 
theology, it may be thought that we are 
moving in a direction which will lead at last 
to complete departure from all the old forms 
of faith. In a certain sense the modern devel- 
opments of Theism and Unitarianism may 
seem to satisfy our conditions. The univer- 
sality of religion, and the harmony of its 
truths with the spheres of science and morals, 
might seem to be fully recognized in some of 
the movements of religious thought, with 
which we are familiar in our times, that yet 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 69 

can be called Christian only by a very vague 
and indefinite use of that term. Some of my 
hearers may be inclined to ask, what then, will 
furnish us with a guiding principle, such as 
shall secure us from a too great latitudi- 
narianism, while yet we are running on lines 
somewhat different from those once accepted 
by the church ? Are we to throw away the 
distinctive features of Christian Evangeli- 
calism which have proved the solace of so 
many, and have been the really dominant 
powers of the last two millenniums ? Our 
answer can only be — most assuredly not. 
The test which will now be proposed, and 
which is as necessary as those that have pre- 
ceded it, preserves for us the precious herit- 
age of our faith in the atonement and sacri- 
fice of Jesus Christ. 

We may advance it in the following terms : 
A theology can only be regarded as religious 
when it teaches, as one of its primary truths, 
a Divine action in respect of human sin. If 
religion includes the approach to God in our 
worship, and the constant recognition of 



170 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

God's grace and mercy in our life, then the 
theology upon which it depends must deal, in 
some way or other, with the stupendous fact 
of human sinfulness. A consciousness of sin 
is one of the primary facts of human nature. 
Personal experience and universal history 
proclaim man's knowledge that he is under a 
shadow, that he has broken the law of God, 
and fallen from some condition of innocence 
towards which he ever looks with longing 
eyes, but from which he is ever driven by 
some resistless power. The history of all re- 
ligions bears testimony to this. No rites have 
ever been celebrated which do not include 
within them a confession of human sin, and 
in some way endeavor to expiate, atone for, 
and remove it. Every system of thought, 
every culture, which has ignored this sinful 
condition, has been only a passing phase of 
speculation, dying by its own inherent weak- 
ness and utter disagreement with the solemn 
facts of human consciousness. Pure natural- 
ism is itself unnatural, and humanity turns 
away weary, disgusted, because it has failed 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. Ijl 

to find consolation for its greatest sorrow, 
healing for its worst disease. I 

It is when man seeks to approach God, 
that he becomes most aware of his sinfulness. 
When the prophet beheld in the temple the 
vision of God, whose train filled the sacred 
edifice, and around whom the seraphs ever 
burned and blazed in the glory of their ser- 
vice of praise, he became profoundly con- 
scious of his sin, and of the sin of his people, 
and he cried out, " Woe is me, for I am un- 
done. I am a man of unclean lips, and I live 
among a people of unclean lips." W T hen 
the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ burst 
upon the astonished gaze of Peter, and His 
control over the natural world was seen in 
the miracle, the Apostle fell down before the 
Saviour exclaiming, " Depart from me, O 
Lord, for I am a sinful man." 

What are these instances, but examples of 
the common experience of mankind ? A 
sudden and overwhelming apprehension of 
God throws man back upon the profounder 
sense of his moral nature ; and in the light 



172 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

which shines from the face of God, man sees 
and recognizes the peril, the hateful nature 
of his sinfulness. 

It is clear, therefore, that any system of 
doctrine concerning God and God's relation 
to man must include the fact of sin, must in 
some way point out a method of dealing with 
it, and such a mode as shall relieve the hu- 
man heart from its pressure, and take away 
its stains from the soul. 

Let us, then, apply this test in our theo- 
logical studies. It will save time and temper. 
It will guard us from wanderings in direc- 
tions where there can be no prospect of find- 
ing atonement or sanctification. It will help 
us to conserve what otherwise we might be 
induced to throw away, and thus the soul will 
never be left upon a sea the dangers of which 
are laid down in no chart, and over which 
it might be tempted to sail without rudder or 
compass. 

It is clear, then, that our theology must 
recognize human sin, and the deep convic- 
tions of guilt which all men feel. Following 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 73 

this is the sense that our sin must be — I 
think I may add, the strong expectation that 
it will be — removed. But then comes the 
question, how is this to be accomplished ? 
The soul hears the thunder of the law which 
it has broken. Who shall turn the awful 
sound into the sweet music of approval ? 
The law is external to man, away from him, 
though decending upon him with its terrible 
sanctions. Suppose he ceases from his sin ; 
this does not undo the past. Sin remains an 
eternal fact, so far as man is concerned, and 
not all the tears of all the sorrowing ones can 
wash out the stain of a single sin. Besides 
which, sin is not only an objective fact in 
a broken law, it is also a condition of the 
soul, and it clings to man as the poisoned 
garment to the ancient hero, not even to 
be torn away by death. Man is powerless. 
This is clear. Where can he look for help, 
for deliverance ? The source of judgment 
must be also the spring of mercy. God 
Himself must supply the means of expia- 
tion, if the guilt is to be removed; must 



174 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Himself give the succor, if the soul is to be 
renewed. 

These are the mere commonplaces of per- 
sonal experience and conviction. But they 
are the profound, all-searching principles 
which must govern any system of adjustment 
between God and man. 

It is not our intention to criticise or defend 
any special theology in this discourse. But 
it needs hardly to be said that, if these tests 
are true (and we need not appeal for testi- 
mony beyond your own consciences), many 
of the systems of theology and religion which 
are now endeavoring to make way amongst 
us are decisively condemned. So necessary 
is this, that its recognition on the part of 
some of the ecclesiastical and scholastic 
theologies which have been and are still in 
vogue, gave to them their profound hold 
upon the church, and their success amongst 
mankind. Spite of their narrowness, of their 
verbal controversies, of their untruthfulness 
in many respects, men have found in them 
those truths which deal with the intense 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 75 

needs of the human conscience. The ma- 
jority of people have not stopped to consider 
them as a whole, but have leaped with joy to 
their blessed teaching concerning sin and its 
removal, and have rejoiced in the strength 
and comfort which they have thus gained. 

This is emphatically the truth which the 
New Testament reveals to man. The sacri- 
fice and atonement of Jesus Christ is, there- 
fore, the gospel of humanity. Being this, it 
claims to be universal and eternal. Being 
this, it has been welcomed everywhere, and 
promises to win the world to its allegiance, 
and gather all men into its cheer. 

Apply these three tests to the doctrines of 
Jesus Christ. The most unpractised mind 
will not require that I should point out how 
completely they are satisfied. Is it strange 
then that we find the religion of Jesus emerge 
from corruptions, free itself from superstitions, 
disentangle itself from the ecclesiastical ming- 
ling with it of the absurdities of paganism, and 
evermore hasten to fulfil the promises made to 
the early believers, that He should become 



176 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory 
of His people Israel ? What the Scriptures 
have already revealed to the children of faith, 
the event is rapidly showing to every man, 
that in the dispensation of the fulness of times 
He will gather together in one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven and which 
are on earth. 

My closing words shall be few and practi- 
cal, and, first, to students. Remember that 
theological research is not necessarily religi- 
ous. A man may study even the sacred 
themes of God, and God's character and 
works, without any sense of reverence, with- 
out any consciousness of a life that is ob- 
tained from God Himself. Indeed, without 
special care, the pursuits of theology may 
harden the heart, and, by familiarity, render 
the spirit unimpressible to religion itself. 
The habits, therefore, of devotion, personal 
watchfulness, meditation, prayer, especially 
the active endeavor of a Christian life, are 
needed to accompany and freshen and vitalize 
theological knowledge. Be very careful of 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 77 

dealing with the facts and truths of your 
study, as if they were the mere symbols of 
mathematics, scarcely better than the pawns 
and counters of an intellectual game. Thus 
dealt with, theology becomes diabolic, the 
mere mockery of God, and perhaps the most 
immoral influence to which the human soul is 
exposed. But when the intellectual study is 
accompanied by a truly devout life, then will 
this science give elevation to the soul, raising 
the mind, disciplining all its powers, and ever 
shining about the inner character and the 
outer conduct, as a light from the throne of 
God. 

To the general audience, also, I have one 
counsel. We have been speaking about the 
importance of a true theology in relation to a 
religious life. To some of you, doubtless, the 
very terms and methods of theological science 
are utterly unknown. Perhaps much that is 
said by a theologian is obscure, difficult to be 
understood ; and you may have felt that if re- 
ligion is so dependent upon theology, and 
theology is almost an impossibility to you, it 



178 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

is hopeless for you to endeavor after devo- 
tion ; the service of God can only be for those 
who understand, or at least can with some in- 
telligence deal with the high mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven. Not so. The little 
child has its little plot of garden ground. In 
the extent of but a few square yards, there 
may go on processes which, in their investi- 
gation, all the learned men of all the learned 
societies in the world might spend their life- 
time, and yet only stand upon the threshold 
of the truth which the small patch of garden 
may reveal. The sun will shine upon it, and 
his shining shall call for all the astronomer's 
skill to explain ; the winds shall blow upon it 
and the rain fall, and what can the meteorolo- 
gist, even yet, tell us of these mysterious 
forces ? The chemist and the physiologist 
have wondrous books to open and to read, in 
the powers of the soil, and the bursting of 
the seed, and the blooming of the tiny flower. 
What does the child know of all these scien- 
ces ? Their very names it cannot spell ; and 
yet the little one may plant the seed, and 



RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. 1 79 

watch the opening bud, and gather a fair 
nosegay, and bring it as its offering of affec- 
tion to a loving parent. So, simple-hearted 
child of God, thou mayest tend thy plot of life 
in God's great garden ! The mysteries of the 
science of God and His life, His dealings with 
thyself, thou canst not fathom ; but thou 
mayest bring thine offerings of prayer and 
praise ; thou canst grow the flowers of piety 
and sweet service. Understanding little, thou 
mayest yet love much, and find at last that 
prophecies shall fail, and tongues shall cease, 
and knowledge shall vanish away ; but that 
love never faileth ; that love, indeed, is life, 
the very life of God, for God is love. To 
thee the mysteries of knowing shall all be re- 
solved and made clear in the holy sacrifice of 
the devout and loving heart. 



RELIGION AND LIFE— THE 
SUPREME STUDY. 



James IV., 14. — For what is your life ? 



VII. 

RELIGION AND LIFE— THE SUPREME 
STUDY. 

In the midst of the course of sermons ad- 
dressed to different classes of students, I 
have thought it well to interpolate a discourse 
of a more general character, partly to meet 
the needs of the average congregation, and 
partly because it seemed unbecoming to al- 
low the significance of the first service of the 
new year to pass by without notice. We 
are not observers of days and seasons. Ours 
is not the faith which believes that Heaven's 
relation to earth depends upon any time or 
any recurrence of the anniversary of even the 
most important event. God is always our 
God, and Jesus Christ by coming into time, 
and taking upon Himself the conditions of 
our temporal life, has made all time sacred, 
and every day a day of the Son of Man. 



1 84 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

And yet, inevitably, certain seasons will evoke 
becoming sentiment and make the human 
heart more ready to receive certain impres- 
sions. It is, therefore, wise of the preacher 
to seize these occasions, and endeavor by 
their aid to fasten more securely the nails of 
conviction, resolution, and reform, which the 
masters of assemblies ever seek to drive. 

The new year is one of these times. Xew 
Year's day has in itself nothing different from 
any other day of all the year. It is an arbi- 
trary, customary thing only, and yet no one 
lives through it, no one spends the days 
which are near to it, without some solemn 
thought on life and character, on duty and 
destiny. My hearers are prepared by the 
mere fashion of the season to ponder more 
deeply, perhaps, than is their wont, those 
dread possibilities of our life, those con- 
ditions, cares and woes, upon which depend so 
much a present welfare and an eternal hap- 
piness. I therefore propose to speak, to-day, 
of that supreme study — not technical or pro- 
fessional, not the study of a class or school, 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 85 

but universal, human, Every man here is a 
learner. In this pursuit all must share. In 
this school all must graduate or fail. I still 
address " students and thoughtful persons/' 
but, directly and personally, I claim the 
attention of every one to whom God has 
given the awful responsibility of living, and 
before whom there lies an everlasting career 
whose portal is death, and whose end comes 
never. 

My subject is, therefore, Religion and 
Life, or the Supreme Study. 

And in the first place, let us consider the 
object of study — Life. What is it ? What is 
its scope ? How wide are its limits ? 

It would not seem to be a very difficult 
matter of definition, for it is so common, 
so well known. Every man lives, every 
man knows in a moment what we mean 
when we use the term. It is the immediate 
consciousness of each living being, and yet 
there is perhaps nothing which so escapes 
us when we endeavor to lay hold of it, to 
perceive its essential qualities, and to ex- 



1 86 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

press them in some terms of clear and pre- 
cise meaning. 

You all know how difficult it is to define 
life in its restricted sense, to point out the 
limit which separates the purely material and 
mechanical, from the organic and vital ; how 
the difficulty increases when our term in- 
cludes the vegetative and the animal, and 
finally rises to the intellectual, the moral, the 
volitional, and the spiritual. What is life? 
we ask, and the chemist and the physiologist, 
the physicist and the metaphysician have not 
yet settled the bounds of vitality, and agreed 
upon the terms of the answer which they will 
give us. 

But we are to-day, not men of science, nor 
even men of metaphysical philosophy. We are 
moralists and preachers, and our concern is 
with the phenomena and activities which may 
be seen in the manifoldness of human exis- 
tence, in the play of human passions, desires, 
energies, in the regulative laws of conduct, 
in the growth of character, in the universal 
development of the society and race of man. 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 87 

Suppose we take our stand at a street 
corner in the crowded city, and look forth 
upon the crowd which drives past us like the 
stream of some swiftly-flowing river. The 
buildings of the town tower above us on 
every side. There stretches a plot of ground 
where sleep the dead of the past generations, 
but our concern is not now with them. 
Across the way rise the tall marts of com- 
merce. Exchanges, banks, offices, and stores 
receive and pour out again a busy troop of 
toiling men and women. Up the street yon- 
der, we catch sight of the corner of a build- 
ing where the varying claims of conflicting 
desires are adjusted, where justice is dis- 
pensed, where crime is punished, and inno- 
cence, wrongfully accused, is cleared. An 
opening in the street lets through a shim- 
mer of light from the river or the sea, where 
the stately masted ships or smoking steamers 
give us a suggested outlook to the far-off 
lands. Men, and women and children, on 
foot, or in coach or car or wagon, press along 
in their respective purposes of pleasure, pro- 



1 88 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

fit, toil or recreation. The streets are full of 
roar and rattle. Above our heads trains go 
thundering by. The shuffle of footsteps, the 
confused sounds of busy trade, the murmur 
of conversation, the ten thousand voices of 
city life blend in a strange music, like the 
voice of many waters. The nation's flags flap 
in the flying wind from roof and turret. Mul- 
titudinous wires cross and recross the streets, 
upon which breezes, as they pass, play fantas- 
tic melodies, and along which there fly, swift 
with the lightning's flash, the messages of 
trade, of joy, of affection, the tidings of a 
world's life, the dismal details of our human 
story. High over all these there springs to 
heaven the church tower, from which ever and 
anon ring out the chimes or toll the hours, 
telling of the flight of time, presage of the 
eternal ocean whither ever flows this stream of 
life. Bewildered, dazed, with senses by turns 
arrested, startled, quickened, now in medita- 
tion,, and now rudely reminded to give regard 
to the external scene, we stand and gaze and 
wonder, and we say, " This is the life of man ! " 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 89 

The scene is changed. In the seclusion 
and retirement of our own chamber, we peruse 
the history of our human life. Perhaps the 
page we read is the brilliant, and picturesque 
story of the Roman annalist, or mayhap the 
deep and philosophic tale of him who told 
how Athens having fought and gained the 
security of Europe's people, was herself over- 
whelmed and broken by her sister states. The 
gorgeous gallery of a Gibbon may be our 
study, and we watch with breathless interest 
great Rome toppling to her fall, while on her 
ruins rise the greater marvels of our modern 
life. The horrors of Revolution may enthral us 
in the flashing lines of a Carlyle, or the severer 
movement of a nearer writer may tell of the 
foundation, and the growth, the fortunes, and 
the glory of the Western World. Perhaps we 
peruse the columns of a modern daily paper. 
Damp from the press, the crowded page, that 
only a few short hours ago was swiftly grow- 
ing 'neath the printer's fingers, tells the story 
of the world's doings no later than from yester 
morn to yester eve. Here, we read how, five 



190 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

thousand miles away, the armies are met in 
battle-shock, and strew the ground with dead 
or dying, and build up an empire or over- 
throw a dynasty that has ruled for half a 
thousand years. Here, a murder spreads its 
ghastly details ; there, a marriage rings its 
merry bells ; there, a lingering death lays low 
a teacher, a ruler, a master of the nation. 
Then come joke and pun, the speech of 
demagogues, the lispings of " fair girl grad- 
uates," the debates of senates, the rise and fall 
of stocks, the inflow of gold, the temperature 
of chilly frost or sweltering heat, a fire, a 
flood, a discovery, the long catalogue of 
Satan's devices, victories, the longer line of 
God's great doings in lifting the world to 
Himself, and bringing, one day nearer, the 
final victory of everlasting good. We finish 
our paper, we throw it into the waste-basket, 
or fold it up and start it off upon a voyage 
round the world, to let our friends know how 
things are with us, and we muse an instant 
and cry, " Such is life ! " 

Or, maybe we find the object of our study 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 191 

still elsewhere. Not in the history of the 
past, not in the story of the world from day to 
day, but in ourselves. Locking out all the ex- 
ternal activities, forgetting all the past history 
of men, "far from the madding crowd," where 
not even the echo of life's cries can reach us, 
we explore the hidden secrets of our heart, 
we recall our own way, we interrogate our 
own consciousness. Which is more wonder- 
ful, the macrocosm of the great world, or the 
microcosm of ourselves ? Verily I know not. 
Passions sw r eep up from the deep caverns of 
the soul, and on the smaller stage of our 
own experience, there are the possibilities of 
dramas as eventful as were ever presented, 
when we 

. . . . "let gorgeous Tragedy 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by, 
Presenting Thebe's or Pelop's line 
Or the Tale of Troy Divine." 

We too might sing epics that shall tell the tale 
of encounters, long wars, and direful sieges 
within the region of our own heart's beating. 



192 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Device and pride and envy and courage, 
greed and revenge, with pity, truth, and grace 
and love, are all within us. all alive, active, 
expressive of themselves, forming a world, 
varied and grotesque, pathetic, triumphant or 
disastrous, and all-absorbing as the great 
world about us. Within us, empires rise and 
fall. Within us there are battles, bruits, the 
quiet growth of laws, loved and loyally obeyed, 
the mighty insurrections and revolutions 
which make or forever mar a soul. And then 
memory takes up the duty and recalls the 
past. The frolics of childhood, the songs 
of youth, the resolutions of the opening life, 
the dogged perseverances, the ambitious 
quests, the helps, the antagonisms, the loves, 
the hatreds, the riot, the order, the obedience, 
the duty, the holy service of our lives, all 
troop before us, and we review the story, 
whereof we are at once the actors, the re- 
citers, the perusers, of these years that have 
brought us to the present hour, and with 
sobered spirit and chastened heart, per- 
haps with tearful eye (though happy if that 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 193 

peace which the world gives not possesses 
our soul with a pledge of divine mercy), we 
rise to the common duty of our place, our 
service, and we say, " This too is life." 

This then is our problem, this is the su- 
preme object of study, this the study in which 
every one is called to engage, where each 
one becomes at once subject and object of the 
pursuit. 

How important is the study of this life — 
quite apart from its interest, although this is 
not slight ! A man has only to give himself 
up to the observation of it, and he will find 
that it ever draws upon him with increasing 
power. It is so varied ; it has scenes of so 
much beauty and delight; its least lovely 
forms are still absorbing. It appeals to the 
curiosity of our nature. All men ask, What is 
it ? and some men ask that question with an in- 
tensity, an iteration that belong to nothing else. 
But, I repeat, it is important that we under- 
stand it, for it is a practical object of study. 
We are part of it, we are related to it. It is 
ourselves ; and the modern poet who sings that 



194 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

"the proper study of mankind is man" only 
echoes the answer of the ancient oracle, which 
declared that "the highest knowledge" pos- 
sible for man was " to know himself." We 
cannot do our work, we cannot enjoy life, we 
cannot be our best selves, we cannot " serve 
our generation by the will of God," unless we 
know this life, whose manifold forms and var- 
ied activities we have reviewed. Of course, 
in a certain sense we can live without under- 
standing much of life. But when we live 
thus, we are not much better than the animal, 
nay, we are no higher than the flower or the 
tree. This lives, obeys the law of its being, 
grows and puts forth its leaves, is colored, 
graceful, odorous, drops its rich fruit, scatters 
its seed, and dies when it has fulfilled its des- 
tiny in being perfected itself and securing 
the perpetuation of its kind. The patient ox 
that browses in the meadow or tramples with 
its slow strength among the corn it threshes, 
or before the groaning wain it draws ; the 
bird that flutters in the sunshine, or swings 
upon the branches of the tree, or nestles 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 195 

'neath the eaves ; the fish that darts through 
the stream and shows its speckled back 
above the mountain brook or leaps at the fly- 
that skims the surface of the wave — all these 
live, and according to their law of life, live 
perfectly and fully. But we are neither beasts, 
nor birds, nor fishes ; we are men, who can, 
nay, who must look in and through. We 
have the divine gift of asking, what is this ? 
and why ? and whither ? and, at our peril, do 
we neglect to find the answer and then shape 
our life according to the answer that we find. 
Sometimes perhaps we may with the singer 
simply feel the joy of being ; we may say; 

" O gift of God ! O perfect day ! 
Whereon shall no man work, but play ; 
Whereon it is enough for me, 
Not to be doing, but to be." 

And yet the chief business of life must be 
working or playing ; we must ' do,' and for 
' doing ' we must understand and therefore 
we must study this life. 

And the importance of it is only equalled by 



196 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

its difficulty. Some of you know how com- 
plex is the problem of motion even of a single 
body in space. The complexity is increased 
when we would determine the law which con- 
trols the relative movement of two bodies, 
while to add a third is to find ourselves 
launched into the most intricate calculations 
of the highest mathematics. A fourth body 
renders the problem almost insoluble. And 
if this be true of the mere mechanical laws 
which control the movement of bodies, what 
shall we say of that vexed question of our 
many-sided life ! That crowd we saw down 
town, that multitudinous scene of human 
history, that press and strife of our own in- 
ternal condition — what solution shall we apply 
to this ? The man who can weigh the heaven- 
ly bodies has no scale which can hold even 
the spirit of a new-born babe. The alembic 
which shall resolve the most complex of 
chemical substances, loosening the subtle 
affinities which work out the beautiful forms 
that gleam in the flashing facets of the crystal, 
has no solvent which may evolve the hidden 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 19/ 

forces that play within the soul of the simplest 
peasant who does his hireling toil upon the 
harvest field. And then, added to these are 
all the difficulties which arise in the study of 
ourselves. Who can know knowledge, who 
can feel feeling, who can perceive perception ? 
Explain the human will ; begin its definition ; 
search its workings. It eludes you, and the 
very effort to look in upon yourself, causes 
the very self to vanish, or to hide itself be- 
neath the attempt to find it. The meanest, 
the lowest, the least taught can live, but 
the mightiest mind that ever sought to 
know what is this living, will at last con- 
fess that having known all, he only knows 
he cannot know, and finding most, finds 
last of all that most of life lies far beyond 
his finding. 

This, then, is our life, and this the import- 
ance, this the difficulty of the study upon 
which however, we affirm again, every one 
must be set. 

But what shall we say is the life ? for we 
have not yet attempted to define it. And 



198 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

how shall we approach the study ? what are 
the aids which we may seek for it ? 

It may not be amiss here, if we ask what 
have been some of the definitions given by 
students, or indeed by masters — perhaps 
would-be masters, or accepted masters ; by no 
means in all cases true masters of the study ? 

Not a few, and notably in our day, con- 
sider that they have spoken the last word con- 
cerning life when they have resolved it all 
to matter and to material force. In all life 
the most evident presentation is body, and 
the expression of the life is always in some 
bodily form. Men are running to and fro. 
Men eat and drink, men breathe, and look, 
and speak. Air, and water, and blood, and 
muscles, and nerves — these are the elements 
out of which the structure of our life is built. 
We can draw lines and measure distances, 
we can sum up additions, and we show how 
all is only motion ; and it matters not 
whether the motion be of the one first atom 
of some living tissue, or the combined move- 
ments of organized molecules so numerous 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 1 99 

that human calculation fails to count them, or 
so minute that the keenest eye, the finest in- 
strument, fails to catch them. Still all is mat- 
ter, all is motion, and besides, there is naught. 
But is this so ? we ask. Can you thus ex- 
plain life ? Have you not in the very process 
of your calculation, in the very steps of your 
minutest search, stopped the activity, de- 
stroyed the life, and lost the fine and subtle 
power which makes the human congeries of 
being just what it is, different from your heap 
of mineral specimens, something wholly alien 
and foreign to your gathered stores of physi- 
cal atoms, your calculated measures of time, 
and space, and weight ? The labored efforts 
to compel us to accept this solution are only 
the proofs, too plain and unmistakable, that the 
common sense of mankind, the consciousness 
of each man, is right when it rejects the ma- 
terialist's definition, and still asks with earnest 
impatience, But what is life ? 

And we find no better answer in the ab- 
stract teachings of philosophy. To have 
rounded life in a conception, to gain a clear 



20O SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

idea, to have sought the unity which shall 
have embraced the diversity of life, to express 
this perfectly in language — in a word, to find 
life solved in knowing, is no better conclusion 
to the study. One wise man called it vanity, 
and some have supposed him inspired in such 
an impotent conclusion — impotent, for men 
will live and struggle to live, though surely 
if all be vanity, we had better make no fur- 
ther fuss of living, but quietly and decently 
give it up. The old saying concerning phil- 
osophy was, that it was a " Meditation of 
Death/' as if knowing should only bring us to 
the end, the close, the nothingness of all. 
But each new philosopher has gone again to 
the problem — plain proof that he, at least, was 
not content with his predecessor's solution — 
and the common man has paid no heed to 
the conflicts of the schools, holding them but 
as babblings, and assured by some divine 
voice within him, that death was certainly not 
the end, the perfectness of life. What is life ? 
still asks the student. What is life ? still 
queries every man who lives. 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 201 

And it is here that religion steps in and 
gives us her aid to the solution, and not only 
interprets the mystery, but adds the terrible 
sanction of woe to him who refuses to be 
taught by her. 

Life is not all you see, she first of all 
declares. Life is not body, not merely bodily 
activity. It is the outflowing of some inner, 
some higher, some altogether unbodily force. 
Life is the energy of spirit, and spirit can 
never be expressed in terms of matter or of 
force. It is more subtle than the subtlest 
power you can detect in nature, swifter than 
light, more impalpable than the ether, abiding, 
even when what you call the vital forces have 
worn themselves out and have ceased to act. 
Life is a beam of another sun than that which 
sustains our system, and gives strength and 
activity to all things therein. Life is a voice 
not heard in the rustling leaves, or where the 
sea-waves break upon the tawny sand. Com- 
pared to this life, even in the meanest, all the 
powers and energies, all the vast regions of 
the material universe, though it lie beyond the 



202 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

furthest star that glistens on the bosom of the 
night, are less than the tiniest cell which your 
microscope reveals, more swiftly passing than 
the ephemera, which dances its short hour in 
the summer sun, and dies. See, yonder stands 
a grave and serious man. His hand is on the 
breast of that prostrate form. Slowly the 
throbbings of that heart have grown still, and 
now he tells us life has ceased. What is life, 
we ask, and he unfolds the awful secrets of 
that human body. He shows the heart, the 
avenues of flowing blood; he opens the mys- 
teries of tissue, gland, and nerve. He bids 
us mark the changes which food and air 
undergo in the living chemistry of that body. 
See how the carbon is burnt and supplies the 
heat, how the nitrogen builds up the tissues, 
how of the earthy salts each finds its place 
and discharges its office. Look at the fibres 
of the muscles, the wondrous complexity of 
nerves along which feeling and volition fly in 
swift and certain execution. The external 
emotions impel the internal activities, and the 
environment of force produces the individual- 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 203 

ity of organization with all its manifold forms 
of life. And now all is over — the work is 
done, the fire is burned out, the engine is 
worn, the life is flown, or rather has ceased, 
and that is all. All, most learned man ? Go 
ask yonder weeping woman if that is all. If 
that is what she loved and trusted and over 
which perhaps she has broken her heart, and 
wasted her being. Go ask those friends who 
grasped the hand, and sought in the light of 
those eyes their inspiration, and to whom the 
now silenced voice was as a trumpet-call to 
duty and to endeavor. That is all ? Go ask 
the men who read the lines he wrote, who 
will a thousand years hence recite his sayings 
and sing his songs. That is all ? Go ask the 
crowds whose nobler instincts he summoned 
into being, whose life he conducted, and 
whom he has preceded — at least so they 
believe — into some eternal world where the 
broken lines of life shall be taken up again, 
and woven once more into a garment that 
wears out never, and whose beauty and per- 
fectness shall never be spotted or made less. 



204 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

Life is spirit, undying*, divine — the very 
breath of God, eternal as His being, of the 
immortal essence of the everlasting Lord, 

O, what is man, great Maker of mankind, 
That Thou to him so great respect dost bear, 
That Thou adorn'st him with so bright a mind, 
Mak'st him a king, and e'en an angel's peer. 

O, what a lively life, what heavenly power, 
What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire, 
How great, how plentiful, how rich a dower, 
Dost Thou within this dying flesh inspire ! 

Thou leav'st Thy print in other works of Thine, 
But Thy whole image in his soul hast writ, 
There cannot be a creature more divine, 
Except, like Thee, it should be infinite. 

Nor hath He given these blessings for a day, 
Nor made them on the body's life depend ; 
The soul, though made in time, survives for aye, 
And though it hath beginning, sees no end. 

Sir John Da vies, 1599. 

And religion has not only the answer to 
our question, but it affirms also a law which 
governs the life ; for only half the problem of 
being is solved when we have defined it and 
discovered its essence. The life, as we have 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 205 

said, is manifold and divine. It is fluent, its 
energies are limitless, it seems wayward, al- 
most wanton. There is no chaos, no dis- 
order in the material world, but in the vital 
universe it would seem that this very liberty 
which gives it its difference, gives it also its 
misrule and its riot. But, as religion declares 
that life is the activity of spirit, and is there- 
fore free from the surroundings of the physi- 
cal, so also it affirms that there are spiritual 
limits, and these are the manifestations of 
the Supreme and the Absolute Spirit, by which 
our natures are to be governed, and (if not 
self-controlled,) must necessarily be subordina- 
ted and bound. Man is free, religion de- 
clares — absolutely free of sense, and matter, 
and force ; but man is conditioned, law-given, 
law-governed by the intelligence, and purpose, 
and will of the Almighty, the infinite God. 
God is thus the rule of life. He stands at its 
beginning and sets it going. He watches and 
guards and directs it. Every step we take is 
a step beneath His eye, and with His hand 
on either side of us, to keep us in the way 



206 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

that He would have us walk, or at least to 
compel us from that path wherein we must 
not travel. And what is for each of us, is for 
all. God is the law of man's general life. 
The course of kingdoms, peoples, the move- 
ment of the race, the progress of the ages — 
all these are by God's will and according to 
the predetermined purposes of his sovereign 
rule. If you please, you can beat against this 
will as the bird against the cage wherein it is 
confined, and find that your struggle only 
wounds, only destroys you. You may obey 
it, rest upon it, as that same bird, when he 
spreads his pinions upon the driving wind, 
and it shall bear you up and send you on 
your course, and lift you to heaven in a glad 
flight of the soaring soul. " Promise and 
Potency" indeed! Is this all you can make 
out of life ? Religion, which shows you your- 
self and God, in the blessed communion of 
spiritual freedom and obedience, turns the 
promise into ecstatic bliss, and makes the 
potency an assured possession, a certain 
achievement. 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 207 

And religoin takes one other step in this 
lesson to the student of life. It does not 
merely tell him what is life, not merely utter 
for him its law. It shows him the highest 
life, it brings the law down from the awful 
altitude of the divine Being, and gives it the 
form of action with which he is familiar, bind- 
ing it to his own soul in such an one as him- 
self, leads him on in a companionship of life 
transfigured by love which at once instructs, 
inspires, and saves him. Thus, after all, 
life, as we have said, is not only a study, but 
it is a practice. There is an art of living as 
well as a science. Men must know life, but 
they must also live. And this is man's chief 
need, and in meeting this, religion has given 
man her highest blessing. To know what 
he is and to know his law, and then without 
a teacher to perceive the awful gulf between 
him and his law — this were to curse man with 
that last and most awful curse of knowing 
only his despair, his ruin. But there is One 
who bridges the gulf, there is One who 
speaks, indeed, the language of the law, but 



208 SERMONS TO STUDENTS. 

with such tones of love, taking, meanwhile, 
the hand of man and leading him, that man 
begins to hope, and hoping, steps onward 
and rejoices in the way of God. 

At last then, religion brings men to Jesus 
Christ. There is life, such life as God re- 
quires, but there too is grace, and love, and 
help, God's own, God's given, God's assured, 
and so love transfigures life, and lifts it to the 
bosom of the Eternal, and in Him who is 
God with us, we find that we may be with 
God; for He that hath the Son hath the 
Father, and that blessed Son of God is not 
only the Life and the Truth, but also the 
very Way to God Himself. 

So, brethren, my task is done. What is 
our life? I asked at the commencement — 
an all-important, all-engaging question, an- 
swered only, but then fully, in Jesus Christ. 
It remains only for me to ask you, What is 
your life? Is it still a query ? naught but a 
careless wonder ? perhaps a curious half- 
mocking doubt, perhaps an anxious, despair- 
ing cry? The wise man studies from the 



RELIGION AND LIFE. 209 

best masters. Will you not seek the answer 
where only it can be fully given to you ? 

O Thou great Friend to all the sons of men, 
Who once appeared in humblest guise below, 

Sin to rebuke, to break the captive's chain, 

And call Thy brethren forth from want and woe : 

We look to Thee ; Thy truth is still the light 

Which guides the nations groping on their way — 

Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, 
Yet hoping ever for the perfect day. 

Yes ! Thou art still the Life ; Thou art the Way 

The holiest know ; — Light, Life, and Way of heaven, 

And they who dearest hope and deepest pray, 

Toil by the light, life, way, which Thou hast given. 
Theodore Parker, 1846. 



THE END. 



THE LIFE OF 

CHARLES HODGE, D.D., LL.D. 

By his Son, A. A. HODGE, D.D. 

With two Portraits Engraved on Steel by A. H. Ritchie. 



One vol,, 8vo., cloth, gilt top, - - - $3.00 



The Life of Dr. Charles Hodge, by his son and successor, Dr. 
A. A. Hodge, is the worthy record of an almost ideally perfect career. The 
subject of this memoir occupied the most prominent position of any man of 
his time in this country as a guide and leader of religious thought, and this 
by no means wholly within the bounds of his own denomination. The 
influence he exerted was great, because of his consummate ability and the 
conscientious use and improvement of his natural gifts, but also, and chiefly 
because of his noble christian character. It was the heart even more than 
the intellect that made Dr. Hodge what he was, and it is this side of the 
man that is brought most prominently forward in the memoir now published, 
consisting as it does largely of his letters to intimate friends in this country 
and abroad. 

In his great work, Systematic Theology, and in his numerous contributions 
to the Princeton Review, it is the professor of Theology who speaks, but in 
his frequent and affectionate correspondence with his class-mate and life- 
long friend Bishop Johns, and with other intimates, is revealed his sweetness 
of character', humility, supreme devotion to the truth, and his holy life. 

The biographer has done his part well in sifting and choosing, and in 
laying before the reader the record of his father's literary and professional 
career, and the narrative of his home life. To the many hundreds of ministers 
of different denominations, who have sat at his feet, the book will have a very 
precious significance, but it will also have a universal interest and value. 
Two portraits of Dr. Hodge have been engraved for the work by A. H. 
Ritchie, one a likeness at the age of forty-nine, and the other from a painting 
by Ritchie at the close of his life. There is also a picture of his study. 



*** The above book for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent, uJ>oti receipt oj 
frice by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



The Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated br 

THE RELIGION OF 

ANCIENT EGYPT. 

By P. LE PAGE RENOUF. 

(The Hibbert Lectures for iBjg.J 



One volume, 12mo, ------- $1.30 

M. Le Page Renouf s great reputation as an Egyptologist led to his 
selection to deliver the second course of the already celebrated Hibbert 
series. His lectures are the fit companions of Professor Muller's, both in 
learning and in interest. The glimpses laboriously gained by the aid of 
long undeciphered hieroglyphics into one of the most mystical and profound 
of all the ancient beliefs, have always had a special fascination ; and the 
time has now come when it is possible to join their results into a fairly 
complete picture. Done as this is by M. Renouf, with a certain French 
vividness and clearness, it has a very unusual, and, indeed, unique interest. 



CRITICAL. NOTICES. 

" The narrative is so well put together, the chain of reasoning and 
inference so obvious, and the illustration so apt, that the general reader 
can go through it with unabated interest." — Hartford Post. 

" No one can rise from reading this book, in which, by the way, the 
author is careful about drawing his conclusions, without having increased 
respect for the religion of ancient Egypt, and hardly less than admiration 
for its ethical system." — The Churchman. 

" These lectures are invaluable to students of Egyptology, and as the 
religion of ancient Egypt stands alone and unconnected with other religions, 
except those which have been modified by it, itself being apparently original 
and underived, they should be highly interesting to all students of religious 
history. . . . It is impossible in a brief notice to convey an adequate 
idea of Professor Renouf s admirable lectures." — A r . Y. World. 

"The present work forms a remarkably intelligent and acutely critical 
contribution to the history of the origin and growth of religion, as illustrated 
by the religion of ancient Egypt. As a specialist, Professor Renouf is able 
to bring forth much information not ordinarily accessible to the general 
reader, and this he does in such a carefully digested form as to make the 
work entertaining and instructive in the highest degree." — Boston Courier. 



*%* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
price, by 

CHARLES SCRJBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



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